


Bara Kei - The Torment of Roses

by seraphim_grace



Category: Weiss Kreuz
Genre: Drama, Esset, Kritiker, M/M, Precognition, Romance, Rosenkreuz, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-09
Updated: 2010-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:40:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ran Fujimiya is a normal schoolboy asked by his father to look after a business associate, little does he know the business associate has a plan, or Crawford is a precognitive and sees a very familiar young man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Kindness of Strangers: Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ran Fujimiya is a normal schoolboy asked by his father to look after a business associate, little does he know the business associate has a plan, or Crawford is a precognitive and sees a very familiar young man.

_"if you lie on the ground_

_in somebody's arms_

_you'll probably swallow some of their history"_

The brochure had read that tonight was to be an intimate evening of gaslight horror - that for a few hundred yen that you could be titillated by the American masters of the genre read aloud by a legitimate American star of the stage. Ran had read the flier ten times over but was yet to discern who the American star was or what he was reading.

Kobayakawa-sensei had given him the leaflet with the comment that of his entire year only Ran's English was proficient enough to take something from the performance. Every semester the RikkaiDai English society put on a reading. For the past three years it had been the Elizabethan playwrights, this year it was gaslight horror - whatever that was.

Stuffing the flier into the pocket of his green blazer he approached the ticket booth. As a student of Rikkai-Gakuen he knew he would get a discount but at the same time he felt guilty that he had arranged a night off from both his kendo club and part time job for this reading. There was a tall gaijin in the queue in front of him, in a crisp blue sweater and stone coloured jeans, talking on his cell phone. When he turned to look at him Ran hid his eyes behind his bangs.

"Two tickets." The gaijin said in accentless Japanese, "one for me and one for the boy." He said putting a note on the counter and took the two tickets, turning with a smile he handed one to Ran who blushed as red as his hair under his bangs.

"Thank you," Ran stammered, "but it's okay, I can pay."

The gaijin's smile was miraculous, "I know but this means I can be the one who said he introduced you to Poe."

Ran's blush increased and taking his ticket he vanished into the auditorium. he took a seat t the back, in the shadows, where he could watch undisturbed. He noticed the gaijin, because of his height and blue sweater, sitting next to a group of professors from the university, but with no suggestion at all that he knew them or that they knew him, then from the thigh pocket of his jeans he pulled a well thumbed paperback book and sat patiently.

As he waited for the lights to dim Ran found himself staring at the gaijin. He supposed that it was curiosity that made him notice the foreigners perfectly styled black hair, swept back like Andy Garcia's in a film that Ran had watched with his sister, Aya. He cold see the man's horn rimmed spectacles and remembered the man's pale brown eyes; the rise of his throat from the vee of his blue sweater. He thought for a moment about the smattering of dark hairs in the hollow under his Adam's apple. He told himself it was because the man was foreign, and that he had bought him the ticket, but he didn't know the real reason he couldn't keep his eyes off the man.

The stage actor was a burly man in a tweed suit with a thick moustache and a harrumphing voice that almost bellowed out the unfamiliar words rather than read them. Ran came to the quick conclusion that the university hadn't bragged about him simply because he wasn't worth bragging about. The strange English seemed to do no favour for him and Ran found himself tripping over words he knew, but the Gaijin, in his seat amongst the professors with his well thumbed paperback, mouthed the words along with the blustering actor with his full mouth and Ran wished he could read lips so he would know the awe this stranger had for these mangled and strange words.

The wuthering actor stopped for a moment, harrumphed a few times to clear his throat and then turned to a new page. He slowed down, one thumb tucked into the pocket of his vest as he read.

"take this kiss upon thy brow!

And in parting from you know

This much let me avow-"

Ran watched the words shape and fall silently from the foreigners mouth, the way strong thin fingers swept back an errant lock of hair behind a golden ear, and in doing so noticed the fixated way that Ran stared at him, and mouthed along "you are not wrong, " before offering him a friendly smile and turning his attention back to the red faced man on stage. Ran blushed brick red under his bangs, pulling on an ear tail in irritation as the red faced actor continued on and Ran found himself tuning the actor out to wonder why he kept finding himself staring at the gaijin and why it affected him so to have been noticed in his scrutiny.

He wondered if it would be too revealing to get up and walk out now, with the performance barely started. He could claim that the English was too advanced for him, which it was, and that he did not understand the reading, because he didn't, but the truth was more to do with the way his chest flip-flopped when the foreigner looked at him and the way the scent of his cologne, roses and herbs, lingered in Ran's nose, smelling fresh and clean and undeniably male.

Ran drifted as the rotund man in tweed read aloud the unfamiliar cadences of the unfamiliar poem in an unfamiliar language, returning again and again to the same themes of madness and interment and death with fantastical adjectives and uncanny adverbs, haunting nouns and daring verbs and the memory of a sepulchre, whatever that was, by the sea.

Every now and then his eyes found their way back to the mysterious gaijin, to strong hands holding open a battered yellow book and taking more pleasure from this vastly overwrought performance than it deserved. It was the words, Ran realised, that brought this man the small smile at the corners of his mouth, not this actor with his perfect pronunciation, not the room of disaffected students, but the words in his hands.

Occasionally he would look up from the pages, feeling the weight of Ran's eyes upon him, and looked up over his shoulder with that faint almost smile reserved for the writer that Ran couldn't appreciate.

Ran suspected his eyes drifted to the gaijin out of a sense of misplaced envy that he enjoyed this recital when Ran could not. He wanted to know about the women in the two stories the man read. He wanted to know why the RikkaiDai English society had chosen those stories, those poems, and this writer. Why had the gaijin been so amused to introduce him to the work whose English was patently far too advanced for Ran? He even wondered why Kobayakawa-Sensei had thought that Ran would understand, let alone enjoy, it?

He didn't understand but the words were beautiful, he couldn't fathom the way they pieced together in wholes that made the audience gasp or titter like school girls having been exposed to moments of fear. Yet words lingered for their strangeness, tarn and phantasmagoria, eldritch and stygian, words with a strange and rather alien elegance. He associated them with the foreigner in the wool because he seemed to choose these words to catch Ran staring, or perhaps he just wondered if the boy in his gakuran would know the fantastic and unusual words.

Ran was adrift in an inky sea of foreign words that behaved outside the rules that Kobayakawa-Sensei had so patiently taught him. He could be at Kendo he thought as the actor launched into another incomprehensible monologue, or at his part time job waiting tables, or even alone in his room reading or writing the odd stories that took his teenaged fancy.

For a moment he saw himself a hundred years from now as the focus of some foreign university's Japanese society reading out the juvenilia of the award winning author Ran Fujimiya. He saw some bishonen, probably from a band like Johnnys, reading aloud the poem that he had written for Ai only the week before.

He laughed out loud as a few of the students and the tall foreigner turned to look at him. In the corner a couple were kissing, using the relative obscurity as a chance to couple, the professors hummed and hawed over the surprise disturbance as Ran blushed as red as his hair. The foreigner didn't frown, however, he smiled before turning his attention back to the podium.

Ran's stomach flip flopped and the blush passed to what he suspected was an ash grey of embarrassment. He wanted the tiled floor of the auditorium to open up and swallow him whole.

It didn't.

He slipped from the row of seats to the back door and the refreshment vendor there, ordering a bottle of water but secretly wanting a glass of wine. The man might have sold it to him, he knew, if he had the courage to ask. "Vodka red bull," a voice behind him said, and Ran rolled the water bottle over his neck to take some of the fire from his blush. When he turned he found his face buried in soft baby blue cashmere.

He felt the blush return with its full force, cursing his pale complexion, in front of the foreigner who took his glass and knocked it down straight. "out of place?" he asked, and he spoke in a rich accented English, "probably just a bit too advanced for a non native speaker," he leant in to talk softly in Ran's ear, "like me trying to read Murasaki." Ran suspected the man was joking but he didn't get it. "Here," he pressed the paperback into Ran's hands, "you'll enjoy it more this way, I'm sure."

As he crossed the lobby he met a second foreigner, slightly older than Ran himself, with a shock of pea green hair, he wore a slovenly hooded sweater and thread bare jeans. His sneakers were untied. "That kid's staring at you," the other said to his friend.

The foreigner in the blue sweater and stone coloured jeans just shrugged without looking back as he left the performance early.

Ran's mother stood at the kitchen boiling the kettle, she noticed her son with a quick tadaima, before returning to her instant coffee. She looked tired, but Ran didn't comment on it. There was a paperback book burning a hole in his back pocket like a supernova. Aya-chan was on the phone, chattering away like a squirrel. She giggled as her brother passed her and closed the door behind him. He took the book from his pocket and threw it down on the desk, wishing he could throw away thoughts of the gaijin as easily. He snarled for a moment, unsure why he had such a temper, before throwing himself on the bed. He lay face down on the mattress for a moment but found he couldn't shake the thoughts of the gaijin's knowing smile as he had ordered his vodka. Ran snarled at himself before he rolled around to sit on the edge of his bed and from between his legs he pulled out his violin.

He knew he wouldn't get anything done in this fugue but playing the violin always soothed his nerves. He laid the wood against his chin and drew the bow in a few experimental notes.

He was a few bars into a song he knew by rote when Aya-chan opened the door, "Mom wants to know if you're coming down for coffee, or if you and Shiori fought again."

Ran answered his sister with a pillow aimed at her head then lay back down on the bed and sighed with his violin still in his hands.

He took a few long deep breaths before he sat up again and then arranged his music stand. He opened the book to Tartini and the piece his violin tutor had declared to complicated for a boy of his age, and started to play in earnest.

As he jabbed the bow at the strings, his fingers working hard against the strings, his mind returned again and again to the dark haired gaijin in the horn rimmed glasses until foul note after foul note drove the violin from his fingers back to hanging at his sides. He had never felt anything like this.

A quick dinner of instant ramen and a lackadaisical attempt at his homework and he decided to have a bath.

Yet he couldn't get the man from his thoughts, he found himself lingering on his long strong hands and when his own hands found their way to his lap, as they almost always did in the bath, it was the gaijin's hands he thought of. He caught himself and thought of Ai and the parts of her that caught his attention, the curls at the back of her neck when she turned away from him to look at things. He thought of her hands, her soft pale hands, and the purse of her lips and when he came he hated himself.

He dried himself off tersely and then pulled on a black vest and briefs to get into bed. His homework could wait until the morning.

He climbed into bed with his hair still wet, his bangs falling against his neck and lifted the book that the gaijin had given him. It smelt of his cologne. As he traced the words, those he knew and those he didn't, his head was full of the scent of the gaijin. So the gaijin became the hero of those tales, the narrator of those poems, and when he fell asleep, one arm cradled under his head and the other was holding open the book upon the pages of _The Telltale Heart._

He dreamt of the thudding of a heart behind him. He dreamt of strong hands reaching up under the vest he slept in, running across the line of his chest, as his nostrils filled with the scent of the gaijin's aftershave, and with a dark chuckle one of those strong hands reached down under the elastic waistband of his shorts and found the erection he hadn't noticed before with the strange detail of dreams. He could feel the gaijin's breath at the back of his neck, washing over his throat, as one hand's fingers parted the curls of his pubic hair, the other reaching up to touch his neck and hold his head back. Ran was hard, he was so hard it hurt and the gaijin was pressed against his back, his head stopping Ran's from bucking back as with a grunt he came, hard.

He woke up to find he'd soiled himself and his sheets, and every detail of his dream was etched into him. His briefs were wet and sticky with semen and he could still feel his heart thundering like that in the story, his breath quick and his eyes wild.

He was suddenly glad that he would never see the gaijin again.

"_Maybe I don't understand it_  
Maybe I was never meant to know  
I heard he had the whole world in his hands now  
But everything is still out of control"  


Ran only tended to see his parents at breakfast. They both had important jobs with the Takatori company, his father being head of finance and his mother being a secretary on the same floor. His father was still eating his breakfast when Ran came down the stairs, with his mp3 player hanging from his ears, the white cord leading like an umbilicus to the pocket of his green blazer. He unplugged the earbuds as he sat down, letting them dangle around his neck. He poured himself a cup of tea and lifted his chopsticks. "That new executive from New York is going to be in work today," his father told his mother, "the one that is arranging the big shuffle."

"I hear," his mother answered conspiratorially, sipping her tea, "that marketing won't know what hit it, that the financial drain should be stopped."

"Apparently," his father continued, "he is quite the head hunter, there'll be cuts made everywhere to get it back up to scratch. My department has to lose thirty three percent of its costs. Most people are taking wage cuts rather than lose their jobs, but this guy from New York might not accept that in the long term."

"Papa," Aya-chan said with a mouthful of rice, "are you going to lose your job?"

Their father smiled, "of course not, Aya, my department were the one that recommended getting him in and we've made the biggest improvements since the losses started, we'll be the last in line for the detailing. In fact," he winked at his daughter, "I'll be working very closely with Crawford-san from now on."

If Aya was relieved she didn't show it, but very little worried Aya, she had a very insular world in which everyone loved her. She was the most popular girl in her class and it looked like she might win the class elections. Her grades weren't the best but she just smiled at her teachers and they forgave her for not being her brilliant brother in an instant. Ran on the other hand was shy and quiet, but top of his class.

"You'll have to have him around for dinner sometime," his mother said, "just give me some warning and I'll get the afternoon off and actually cook something." She laughed with her husband conspiratorially.

"I'll be in late tonight, Mama," Ran said changing the subject, "I'm going to Riku's after school to study, I might stay over."

"That's fine," she said, "just phone and let me know if you are." She gathered up the bowls to put in the dishwasher. "Aya, I expect you in straight after tennis club if Ran's not walking you home."

"Yes, Mama," Aya pouted, although she didn't have a boyfriend she was often seen lingering in the company of boys.

Lifting a slice of toast from the rack Ran stood up, plugging himself back into his ear buds, "Come on," he told his sister, "otherwise we'll never get to school on time."

Outside he climbed on his bike, making sure Aya was right behind him, before taking off.

 

Ran had three steadfast friends, Riku, who he had known since kindergarten, Mafuyu, who he'd known almost as long, and Shiori, who lived only a street away from Ran but came to school on the subway with her own little brothers. They met him at the gate. Mafuyu, in a sign of teenage rebellion, had his blazer tied around his waist showing his grey sweater vest and blonde streaks in his hair. Riku, like his older brother, had his hair bleached and wore earrings, but got away with it because he was champion in the regional kendo league. His tie was loose and he wore converse sneakers instead of the usual bulky sports shoes. Shiori, on the other hand, was a quiet little mouse of a girl with bobbed black hair and wire framed glasses. She giggled behind her hand and wore a uniform a size too big for her that had been passed down from an older sister. Everyone teased Ran, Riku and Mafuyu that they were dating her. She didn't look like she belonged among them, because they were the best and brightest, handsome young men who might not have been the most popular in school but weren't prey either. They never treated her as anything but one of them. Although sleepovers at her house had stopped years ago. It had more to do with her numerous brothers and sisters, though, than her being a girl.

Shiori was rooting around in her bag, as usual, when Ran walked over having chained up his bike and waved off his sister to her gaggle of girl friends. Shiori's satchel was a thing of wonder and legend. She kept most things in it. It surprised most people there was room for her school work. "See," she said brandishing a closed Sanrio umbrella, "I do have a second spare."

Riku and Mafuyu laughed at their private joke and seeing it Shiori laughed. It was a well intentioned piece of humour and later yen would be exchanged but for now, there was just laughter.

Riku and Mafuyu made bets over everything.

They bet over whether or not there would be a pop quiz in the two classes they shared; who would get the best boken in kendo practise. They bet over who would get the most declarations of love or letters, something Ran always won at. They bet over how many girls would approach Ran and ask if he could help them with some course he probably wasn't doing. They bet over what Shiori had made them all for lunch and which of them had earned the largest portion the day before. It was all harmless and everyone knew it.

Sometimes, to get their attention, girls would stage bets of their own, like who would wear their socks highest, or their skirts shortest, but the three boys only had eyes for their studies. They even pretended to be nice to Shiori to get their affection. It failed.

Kobayakawa-sensei caught Ran on his way to his homeroom. "Fujimiya-kun," he said as Ran turned around. Of all his teachers Kobayakawa-Sensei was Ran's favourite. The man had a wonderful sense of humour and seemed to genuinely enjoy teaching English, unlike his English tutor, of whom he always got the impression she would much rather do anything but. "How was the reading? I mean I heard it was going to be Melville but then someone today told me it was Poe."

"It was Poe, Sensei" Ran agreed. "I didn't understand a lot of it, but there was a person there who gave me the book, but not all the words were in my dictionary. I must admit that I read it and just glossed over those words."

Kobayakawa-Sensei laughed, it was a rich sound of genuine mirth. "Your English tutor is American, isn't she?" Ran nodded, "and I bet she couldn't tell you what half the words meant. Had I known it was Poe, I wouldn't have suggested you go, he really is far above most people's level." He had his hand on Ran's shoulder which caused Riku, beside him, to visibly bristle.

Riku did not care for Kobayakawa-Sensei.

"I enjoyed the stories though." Ran told him, "Especially The Cask of Amontillado and the Fall of the House of Usher."

Kobayakawa-sensei grinned under his moustache. "Nevermore quoth the raven." He quoted in English. Riku, who shared a homeroom with Ran, almost growled.

"What does quoth mean?"

But before Kobayakawa-sensei could answer Riku cut him off, "we better get going, Ran-kun, or we'll be late."

Kobayakawa-Sensei's grin just grew broader. "Always so solicitous, Nakatsu-kun, I can't say I've noticed that in our lessons."

"I am always solicitous, Kobayakawa-sensei," Riku answered sweetly, "I use your lessons to catch up on work from geometry." He turned to his friend, "Come on, Ran, we don't want to be late."

But as they walked away Kobayakawa smiled to himself as he heard Ran say to his friend, "I don't know why you don't like him, he's always nice to me."

"_Hey you, are me, not so pretty_  
All the world I've seen before me passing by  
Silent my voice, I've got no choice  
All the world I've seen before me passing by  
You don't care about how I feel  
I don't feel it any more"

"Tadaima!" Ran called as he opened the door. He never expected anyone to answer him, Aya would be at her dance lessons and his parents were at work, but now and again he was surprised.

"We're in here," His father called.

Ran acknowledged him as he put down his book bag and kicked off his shoes, slipping his socks into his slippers. Aya had thought it funny to buy him pink fluffy bunny slippers and he'd been annoyed at her at first, but they were warm and they did the job, and no one important ever saw them. His friends knew about it and knew his sister and no one else was ever brought to the house.

He slipped off his blazer, hanging it on the hook in the hall, unplugging his ear buds so they hung around his neck as he walked into the main room and stopped still. Sitting at the table, around trays of ordered sushi, were both his parents, the gaijin from the previous day in an impeccable charcoal suit, and the green haired man he had left with.

Ran wanted the ground to open up and swallow him.

He stopped, his breathing catching in his throat as the colour slipped from his face. "And this is our son, our oldest," his mother said introducing him to the gaijin, "our Ran."

A smile slid across the gaijin's face and he wore a strange look that Ran was too young to recognise. "Is that the Kanji for orchid or chaos?" he asked Ran's mother.

"Orchid," she answered without hesitation, probably used to the question, "we were going to call him Hiro until his eyes settled, come here, Ran, and let him see your eyes." Ran stumbled forward as his mother requested.

"Lovely," the gaijin said, "it's very rare, isn't it, eyes that colour?"

"There are Ainu in my family," his mother replied, "it comes from that, his entire colouring is just strange but he's my little orchid for it."

Ran wondered why the ground wasn't swallowing him down yet, it really was about time for it to be doing it, because he was quite convinced if he got any more embarrassed he would explode all over the room and the sushi.

The other gaijin looked amused, as if he was party to some conversation Ran wasn't.

"Love the slippers," he said wryly from the other side of the table as he pushed a maki roll into his mouth.

"Oh, ignore my manners," his mother said being the dutiful hostess rather than proud mother. They were roles she could switch between with ease. "Ran, this is VonSch, Vonschoe," she couldn't pronounce the name

"Schuldig," he corrected, "everyone calls me Schuldig, even the Germans can't pronounce my name." He offered her a winning smile, "it's von Schlossen-hoeffler."

"Schuldig-san," Ran said with a bow of his head, "pleased to meet you, but I have homework, I must be going."

"Ran!" his father chided, "don't be so rude to our guests."

"It's fine," the gaijin said and pulled out a chair, "the poor boy is overwhelmed, I'm Crawford," he said and his smile was warm and inviting as Ran practically collapsed into the seat, "and Ran-kun and I have met before. Didn't he tell you that he was at the same reading I was?"

"I didn't know who you were." Ran stammered almost silently as Crawford laid his hand on his arm. "Thank you for the book, Crawford-san."

Crawford grinned showing the whites of his teeth, "I'm glad you liked it, it means I can be the one to brag that I introduced you to the Americans." Ran was close enough that he could smell his aftershave, that same haunting smell that had lingered in the book and he felt himself drifting towards it like a character in an American cartoon. "Now tell me did you like it?" Ran just nodded mutely. "Ran and I have a lot in common," Crawford continued, "we both like the same books and your mother was telling me you play the violin?" Ran nodded again, "so we must have the same taste in music, and here I was lost in Tokyo thinking I'd never find a similar soul, and there you were, right under my nose. You'll have to forgive me, Fujimiya-san, if I steal young Ran away from you, because Takatori-san has given me pairs of tickets to all manner of things and am not long enough in Tokyo to have a lady date, and Schuldig would hate being taken to the theatre or the opera and I have no other friends."

"I can't see it being a problem, Crawford-san." His mother said pouring him more sake, "after all, Ran could do with the practise in speaking English, I'm sure you wouldn't mind, Crawford-san, with your Japanese being so good."

Crawford looked for a moment that he was about to swallow Ran whole, but it was Schuldig that spoke. "Oh Crawford just loves the Japanese," he paused for an almost instant, "language."

"I must be going," Ran said, "I have to practise and I have lots of homework and…" the words were falling away from him as Crawford held him in his golden gaze through his horn rimmed glasses.

"I thought you were staying with Riku tonight." His mother said.

"It fell through." Ran answered, "I must be going, um, bye." And he practically ran to the stairs, pink fluffy bunny slippers notwithstanding.

Inside his room he slid down the door and tried to catch his breath or his mind, he wasn't sure which was more important. With his hand at his mouth he realised that his parents had sent him with the gaijin, just after he had hoped never to see him again.


	2. The Kindness of Strangers: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Ba Ra Kei**

"_Well he said he'd show you his bed_  


_And the delights of the chemical smile"_

"It's not a date," Ran said leaning up against the music block of the school as Mafuyu checked his date planner to arrange another time for their weekly game. Ran had been telling himself that it wasn't a date for a week.

Mafuyu didn't look convinced. He flicked his head, making his blond streaked hair fall back around his neck over his gakuran collar, the two books were laid out in front of him, both of them standard school issue, Ran's marked in perfect black kanji and Mafuyu's in pencil kana. "It says here, Concert at Blue Room with C, that's a date."

"It's not a date." Ran laughed, "I'm doing a favour for my father, it's a business thing."

Mafuyu narrowed his eyes, "I know you very well, Fujimiya Ran," he said in a rather curious tone, "if it was just a favour for your father you would have told us, you would have Shiori make sure you had everything and you would have sighed melodramatically every time you walked past Hori-san so she'd ask you what was wrong. You've done none of these things, in fact the first I hear about it is because you're blowing me off for it."

"I'm not blowing you off," Ran protested, "I'm rearranging, and besides you wanted a free evening for your photography, it's got to be lots more fun than going to see some singer I've never heard of."

Mafuyu still didn't look convinced, he was beginning to wish Riku was here because Ran never managed to keep secrets from Mafuyu. "So you're missing an evening role playing for a "not date" as a favour for your father, and who is this mysterious C, the daughter of an associate? Because I remember the last time that happened." He tried to look stern but it didn't work.

"Nothing that tawdry," Ran replied, lifting his can and taking a long swallow of the tea, "Dad has a business associate freshly arrived from New York and he knows no one here and Takatori-sama gave him all these tickets for events and no one will go with him, I'm going with him as an opportunity to work on my English." Ran, having finished the tea, crushed the can and threw it into the trash with a perfect basketball shoot, "see, it's not a date, and the man is making lots of job cuts at dad's work so I'm really just a spy."

Mafuyu raised his eyebrow. "And you're sure that's all it is, because I mean, Ran, you can be pretty dim for someone so smart."

Ran frowned at him, "what do you mean? if this is about me always pulling the push door I'm told it's a mark of intelligence."

Mafuyu laughed, "whatever, so are you coming over Saturday so we can storm Helm's Deep."

Ran looked at his planner and then sketched in the date with a pencil taken from his shirt pocket, "there you're booked in, I'll see if Riku's free as well."

Mafuyu lay back on the grass with his arms under his head, "so, this business associate, is he old and smelly?" Mafuyu's mother was a photographer for a large company so he rarely saw the sararimen she worked with. Riku's mother owned a large bakery, where Shiori's was the stay at home kind, which was good considering that Shiori was the oldest of nine children. Riku was an only child but Mafuyu had a younger sister, Miku, in Aya's year, but the two girls had hated each other over a slight in kindergarten.

"Actually no, he's American, not much older than we are, over educated, Mom says, but the only friend he has here in Tokyo is his personal assistant, Schuldig, who won't be seen dead in some of the places that Crawford wants to go, so Dad volunteered me to go with him to see the violinists and literature readings and things that I would enjoy." Ran shrugged against the wall, before checking in his bag for more food, Shiori had packed a large lunch for them but having missed breakfast because he was running late for Kendo he was still hungry.

He checked his cell and was rather surprised to find a text.

He flipped it open and read it, "I hope you don't mind I got your number from your Dad, just making sure everything is still on for tonight. C." Ran smiled to himself.

Mafuyu noticed the look on his friend's face, "not a date," he said, "so if this American isn't old and smelly, is he handsome?"

Ran was saved from answering as Ai walked past. She wore a floor length pleated skirt and her long hair was dyed in two blonde streaks about her face. She had it pulled back in a pony tail today. Her friends didn't look so much like Yankees as she did, and he had been told that she ran with a rough crowd outside school. Ran had come to the conclusion long since that the sun rose and set in her eyes. Unfortunately his friends knew it. "Hey, Hori-san." Mafuyu called out, "looks like you've missed your chance with Ran here," Ran started to blush, "he's got a date tonight."

Ai turned around with a perfectly disdainful look on her face. "Haven't we all, Hinasaki dear, haven't we all." She said before she continued on her way.

Under the blush Ran scowled, "I will kill you someday, Mafuyu," he managed through gritted teeth.

"Ah," Mafuyu grinned, "promises, promises."

"_Things are getting worse, but I feel a lot better  
And that's all that really matters to me"_  


Crawford met him in his sleek black sedan at the corner of the street. He wound down the window as Ran walked past, his boken against his shoulder and both his satchel and violin case hanging from his hands. "need a lift?" he asked with a rather vulpine smile and a wicked look under his horn rimmed frames.

Ran smiled to himself and lowered his head in shyness. "If you're going that way." He said adjusting his sports bag and boken and violin case and satchel to make it look like he was more laden than he really was. Sometimes he had even more than this.

Crawford popped open the passenger side door as he went back to the driving seat, "where are you going?"

"I was going to grab some dinner on my way home, my parents work late tonight and both Riku and Mafuyu are at their part time jobs, and Shiori has to feed her horde of younger brothers and sisters." He lowered his eyes, "I'm sorry, I'm rambling about people you don't know and…"

Crawford cut him off with a smile, "it's okay, I was going to get something to eat too, do you want to eat with me?" Ran's stomach flip-flopped. For a genuine moment he thought he might be sick. Then Crawford laughed. "What are you in the mood for?"

"I was just going to stop at Star Burger." Ran said lowering his eyes, men like Crawford didn't eat at Star Burger. "I'm supposed to be saving my money for RikkaiDai." He frowned a little, aware that he was babbling and completely unable to stop, "I mean I know Mom and Dad will help me out but they want me to be mostly self sufficient."

"I was going to get noodles." Crawford cut him off, "there is this wonderful little stall but if there are two of us I suppose I could splash out on Star Burger." It was meant to make Ran at ease but he just laughed nervously. "Or if the company is worth it we could even go to Burger King."

Ran blushed bright red, "you're teasing me."

"Of course," Crawford answered with a smile, "you do make it easy for me. There is a lovely little American Italian bistro not far from here, we'll get pizza."

"I don't know." Ran blushed, "I mean, well."

"Their pizzas are too big for me to eat on my own and too good to pass up the opportunity." He offered Ran a smile as he moved the gear stick between them, "or have you never had pizza?"

"I've had pizza." Ran looked at his lap, "Aya-chan made it at school once."

Crawford laughed again, "you haven't lived, believe me, until you've had a proper thin crust Italian pizza." And Ran liked that Crawford laughed because he didn't laugh at him, he laughed because he knew what was coming, he knew Ran would enjoy the pizza, he knew Ran would enjoy his company, and Ran smiled to himself.

The restaurant was small and intimate with as many booths as tables and tea lights in glasses on the table. Crawford had urged him to take off his blazer before they came in and Ran had stripped down to his long sleeved shirt, opening the top button after pulling away his tie. He knew it was to make him look like less of a high school student but he didn't know why until Crawford ordered two glasses and a bottle of wine to accompany the sea food pizza he ordered, with garlic bread, dough balls, battered mushrooms and several dips.

There was a lady on the small stage with a microphone and a guitarist playing soft love songs for ambience in the background.

It was a date restaurant and many of the other couples in private booths of leaning over tables were clearly here on a date.

Ran kind of wished he was. For a moment he imagined Ai sitting opposite him but it looked wrong, and then Crawford poured him some wine. Ran blinked at it and wondered if he should say anything, after all he was underage and then he realised this was why Crawford had told him to take off his blazer and tie, so that no one would realise that he couldn't really drink the wine.

It was heady and thick on his tongue, a rich dark merlot that lingered on his palate and he smiled into the glass. "I prefer red," Crawford said, "I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of ordering it."

Ran smiled at him, "I prefer red too." He said into the glass.

He watched as Crawford lifted one of the garlic butter soaked dough balls and popped it into his mouth, licking his fingertips clean, "so, I never got the chance to ask you, did you enjoy the book?"

Ran couldn't meet his eyes, they were like old bronze but piercing through the horn rimmed glasses, "yes, I did, thank you." He said, "but there were words I didn't understand, what does Quoth mean?"

Crawford laughed, "it's an old word for said," he was smiling around the piece of cheese bread he had in front of his mouth, "I have some other books like it if you want to borrow them."

"I couldn't," Ran protested, "it's too much."

Crawford's laugh was sexy, "it's not like I don't know where you live." He offered the platter of pizza towards Ran, "and besides, I get a kick out of introducing you to books that I love, you're like a blank slate I just want to make my mark on." He lifted his own glass in his strong hands and Ran watched him, "I suppose that I should have been a teacher, but that was not meant to be." His glasses flashed for a moment, "so I must make do with corrupting Japanese school boys with cheap house red and American literature."

Ran took the sentence as a jest, hoping that it was intended as a jest. Crawford's lips were stained with the wine and his tongue a rich deep purple licking at them. He took a bite of the pizza but couldn't taste it. He had a lump in his throat the size of a soccer ball. Crawford was so handsome, so suave and knowing, Ran had no idea why he wanted to spend time with him, even if it was just by coincidence.

The pizza must have been good but he couldn't tell, he was that nervous it tasted like cardboard. Crawford was eating and licking his lips listening to the throaty voice of the woman singing strange Italian songs. He licked butter and salsa and olive oil from his fingertips and Ran was fascinated. He only realised that he was nursing his first slice of pizza when Crawford, with a smile asked, "aren't you hungry? If you don't like it, I'll get you something else."

Ran said, "sorry, miles away," and took another bite of the pizza that tasted like leather and smiled.

There was some kerfuffle at the stage as the girl with the throaty voice was replaced by a man in an immaculate suit. "he's very good," Crawford said noting Ran's interest. "Eiri-san in accounting recommended this place to me, he's her brother."

If he saw how Ran hung on his every word he said nothing.

The lounge singer was met by some polite applause and bowed equally politely, his hair was dyed a brash blonde and he had an arrogance about him that suggested more than just talent. The singer was in this place because he wanted to be, not because he could find nowhere better to employ his voice. He wore an immaculate black suit and the waitress, a girl in a red hood, brought him a bottle and glass which she set on the music stand. He offered her a lover's smile and played a few experimental notes on the piano as if testing it for tune.

"Are there any lovers here tonight?" he asked, "married, unmarried, should be married, married to someone else?" he sounded amused by the whole thing, "because love falls where it will and not where it ought." He smiled to himself, and then to the girl in the sleek red dress with the hood over her face, "or you fall in love with two people or that person dies," he took a sip of the cocktail on the piano, using it as a punctuation, "ah, love." He played a few more bars on the piano, confident, playful bars, as he took a piece of paper from one of the waiters. He acknowledged it with a raised glass to a couple, then he took another drink.

"If," he said slowly playing an aimless and beautiful tune on the keyboard, "I were to sell my soul to the devil it would be to go back in time and obliterate the song 'Memories', let me assure you," he looked out across the crowd, meeting Ran's eyes with eyes sharp and blue, "they are never alone in the moonlight."

There was a nervous laugh from the crowd and an older woman in a black dress blushed bright red as she saluted the singer with her wine glass.

Ran took a sip of his own wine, noting that Crawford had topped it up whilst he was watching the singer. He ate mechanically, the food tasting like cardboard and leather, but the wine was rich and meaty on his tongue, gritty like ash. He turned back to Crawford, "this is a really nice place," he said and he meant it, and it was better because he was with Crawford.

Behind them the singer began some song Ran didn't know but he only had eyes for Crawford. It was in English, which he hadn't expected as the lady before him had sung in Italian. He noticed with some surprise that the large platter in front of him was empty only when he reached out and his fingers brushed across Crawford's. He jerked back with a blush. This wasn't a date, he reminded himself; this was a dinner between friends.

Crawford offered him a smile and leant forward, "would you like dessert? It's okay, I'm paying."

Ran bit into his lip thinking, "I don't know," he said and looked a little lost, "I don't know if I like them and I don't want to order something I don't eat."

Crawford smiled, "do you trust me?" he asked.

Ran wanted to think about it. He wanted to take time and wonder, but Crawford was strong and sure and he knew things, things he wanted Ran to experience and Ran just smiled, "yes," he said, "I do." And Ran knew it was true, he did trust Crawford, he wasn't sure why, but he was so confident and sure and he had shown him nothing but kindness. He did trust him. He didn't know why, but he trusted him with his very life.

Crawford offered him a smile and under his horn rimmed glasses his eyes blazed with a strange determination and Ran's heart quickened under the gaze enough that he lowered his eyes back to the wine because he couldn't withstand that look. It made him feel thing he couldn't understand. Crawford just smiled at Ran's bashfulness and called over the waiter.

Whilst they waited, as Crawford sipped strong black coffee to counter the half a glass of wine that he had had.

Ran was starting to feel a little drunk when Crawford cocked his head to listen to the pianist, "I love this song," he said, then he laughed to himself, "it reminds me of things I really shouldn't want to be reminded of."

Ran was suddenly jealous as he listened into the song the blonde man at the piano sang so sadly.

"And you sang 'Sail to me, sail to me;

Let me enfold you.'

Here I am, here I am waiting to hold you.

Did I dream you dreamed about me?"

The song was beautiful and suited Crawford so he listened intently because this song made Crawford smile so it made him smile too.

"_And did they get you to trade_  
Your heroes for ghosts?  
Hot ashes for trees?  
Hot air for a cool breeze?  
Cold comfort for change?  
And did you exchange  
A walk on part in the war  
For a lead role in a cage?"  


The tiramisu had been orgiastic. Ran had never tasted anything like it, even now the strong coffee liqueur lingered on his tongue amidst the soft white cream. He was also a little drunk. "The trick," Crawford said, dropping him off at the corner, "is not to pretend to be not drunk, but to get out of sight as quickly as possible."

He had kicked off his shoes at the door and padded up the stairs in his socks, wanting to laugh but scared of anyone realising that he was drunk and having to explain it to them.

When he reached his bedroom door he slid down the inside biting his lower lip and smiling. His hands felt too large and his teeth seemed happiest pressed against his lips where the taste of the tiramisu and the wine lingered. His nostrils were full of Crawford's clean cologne and his heart full of the smiles and laughs that they shared.

Ran knew it then, totally and utterly, he was in love.

The laugh bubbled in his throat, beyond his control because he was happy, because he was overwhelmed and what else could he do, but laugh?

When the cell alerted him to a message he flipped it open and smiled even more broadly when he saw it was from Crawford, it simply said, "goodnight, _chuu_."


	3. The Kindness of Strangers: Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Ba Ra Kei**

"_From tripping on a shoelace to falling in love  
You keep things under control"_  


Ran looked all over the house and emptied his satchel several times looking for it, but it was fast becoming clear that he had lost his tie.

That meant it was the second one this year, his mother was going to throw a fit, and he didn't have enough money on him to buy a new one in secret until he got a chance to go to the bank which wouldn't happen until at least this afternoon unless he cut class.

He worked out which was the greater transgression, attending school for one day without his tie, although he had both his sweater and blazer, the first items most people lost. Ran was sure that somewhere that there was a great room in Tokyo filled with lost blazers, sweaters, ties and left socks, or cutting class.

His first lesson was economics, which he needed to pass to get into Todai rather than RikkaiDai, which was a choice he still wasn't ready to make yet. The tie would earn him a scolding at worst but cutting class might stop him getting into the university of his choice.

He'd have to go without his tie until tomorrow when he could get another one, or the heavens might fall and he might find the first one in the meantime. He laughed at that, he hadn't seen it since kendo practice two months ago.

Aya had gone ahead today, for cooking club, something Ran couldn't understand because the girl just couldn't cook at all. He climbed on his bike and began the long cycle to school.

Crawford's car pulled up around the corner from the school and opened the car door. Ran nearly fell off the bike when he saw the sedan pull up. "You left this with me," he said handing Ran a small paper bag, Ran gaped and then opened the bag, inside it was his tie, neatly folded and he smiled.

"Thank you," he said, blushing under his bangs.

"I don't suppose you need a ride the rest of the way." Crawford said, "I started at your house but you'd already left, it looks like I was lucky to catch you."

"I'm glad you did, I finish early today and it meant I would have had to go into town to get a new one." Ran blurted out quickly, "I mean, thank you, this would have been the second tie I lost and well, it's…"

"I wore a uniform too," Crawford replied with a warm smile under his glasses, "I was forever losing my sweater." Ran suspected it was a lie but he didn't care.

"Is this your friend, the mysterious C?" Riku asked sidling up to the car, "or are you being propositioned by horrible businessmen again?"

Crawford's expression closed off, his eyes becoming like amber instead of soft honey and the light glinted off his glasses, "and this must be Mafuyu," he deliberately mangled the name because Ran had explained to him and described them both quite well, so it had to be deliberate. Riku knew that, he knew Ran well enough to know that, but Ran ignored it.

"Nakatsu Riku," Riku drawled, "pleased to meet you."

"believe me," Crawford answered in the same dark tone, "the pleasure is all mine," then he turned back to Ran and his expression softened, "I can't make it to the concert on Friday, Takatori is throwing me a party I just _have_ to attend." Ran frowned, clearly disappointed, "here," he handed him an envelope, "take your friends instead, I'll see you on Monday for our appointment, okay, be safe." Then leaving Ran looking at the envelope and a wicked grin he rolled up the window.

"I don't like him," Riku said as they walked into the school, "I don't think he's a nice person."

Ran ignored his friend and opened the envelope, "he's just given me six tickets to see WunderX at ZeppTokyo with backstage passes." He said a little surprised because it wasn't the concert he had been going to attend with Crawford, WunderX had been sold out for months. They had been going to attend a recital of chamber music but he hadn't realized Crawford could score tickets to WunderX at his home venue.

"Of course," Riku said looking at the tickets, "I could be completely wrong about him." He looked around, Ai was stood under the oak tree, her satchel thrown over her shoulder and her skirt billowing about her ankles. Her best friend, Nagayama Nana, was leaning against the tree looking about. Nana was a complete opposite of Ai in that she was small, with short scruffy black hair and a rather wall eyed expression that suggested that she might have been dropped on her head as a child. Ai wore a floor length skirt and full sleeves, she had a floor length coat embroidered on the back with her gang sigil, Nana on the other hand wore a summer uniform no matter how cold the weather, one sock pulled up the other balled around her ankle. Today, for whatever reason occurred to Nana, who was scholastically brilliant but completely unfazed by the world in general, she was wearing a white headband and a pretty brooch on her blazer.

Riku was looking past them when Mafuyu came up, he spotted, with the familiarity of someone who has been a friend since infancy, the tickets in his hand, "how the hell did you score WunderX tickets?" He asked, "I was there the day they went on sale and I didn't get any."

"Ran's sugar-daddy." Riku replied calmly. "I've seen him."

"He's not my sugar-daddy." Ran protested.

"The mysterious C. Is he handsome?" Mafuyu said, "because I could go a long way for WunderX tickets? If he could get ones for NittleGrasper as well I'm happy to suggest a threesome."

"Mafuyu!" Ran said scandalized.

"What, if he doesn't smell, doesn't have a hairy back and can get tickets that I'd happily sell my soul for, I'd trade in my camera to make him happy." From Mafuyu, who carried his camera, an antique Polaroid it cost him a small fortune for film for, everywhere.

"He's a bit," Riku said, "well you know, but look at these tickets."

"Hey, Hori-san." Mafuyu called out, "Ran wants to know if you want to go with him to see WunderX?"

Ai turned around with the usual reticence because if Mafuyu called out he was usually trying to catch you unawares in a photo. She was scowling with a look that suggested violence would follow a flash. Nana turned with her but more with a disinterest that suggested that if Ai had attacked him, which she had done before, that that might have been worth watching. Then her expression softened enough that she became stunning under her red streaked fringe. Ran expected to feel the odd stutter in his heart he always got when Ai's expression took on that wishful, wistful look, but it didn't come. "Did you say WunderX?" She asked. Then her expression became hard and guarded again, "I'm not going if it's just the two of us."

"I have," Ran squeaked, he cleared his throat, "I have six tickets, and well, there are only four of us, and Nagayama-san can come too."

Nana still managed to look bored, one foot pressed against the tree bough, "I don't like WunderX." She said, and cast her head back.

"They have a mango slushie to die for." Ai told her firmly, "the ZeppTokyo is a good venue, we're going."

And that, Ran thought, was that.

_I want you to want me_

_I need you to need me_

_I'd love you to love me_

_I'm begging you to beg me_

Crawford sat back on the plush armchair of the Americanized coffee shop and crossed his legs in a rustle of expensive silk and wool. He had his coffee held in his hands. He drank it strong and black, which to Ran seemed very sophisticated. Ran didn't know how he liked his coffee, so Crawford had ordered him a cappuccino with real cream and vanilla extract and grated chocolate on the top.

Ran simply wore jeans and a worn tee with a band logo that had been washed that often it followed the band into obscurity. He felt under dressed. Crawford was wearing a shirt with a splash design on it and a pale pinstripe. It had cloisonne buttons. This, Ran thought, was how real men dressed casually, looking for all the world like they had spent longer on how they looked than earning the money to arrange it.

There was a plate of soft looking muffins in front of them. Crawford had discovered quickly that Ran had a sweet tooth. They had been meant to go together to the cinema to see a Russian arthouse film but they had the date wrong and it meant that they were alone together with several hours to kill before either of them was expected.

Ran felt that traitorous stutter in his chest he had used to associate with Ai.

It was strange, Ran thought, how easy, and at the same time incredibly difficult, it was to talk to Crawford. When they had met, Crawford's assistant Schuldig had sniped about Ran to Crawford in German but seemed almost pleased when Ran answered him just as quickly. "Your accent is terrible." Schuldig said in Japanese and then walked away, as if forgetting that he had called him Crawford's_ kleine Japanischer puppe_.

Ran didn't really care, because Crawford certainly hadn't.

Ran was telling him about the WunderX concert with the obvious dismay that Crawford couldn't be there, that he had had to work. "And Mafuyu said that if you wanted sexual favours he was more than willing for Nittle Grasper tickets. Or Iceman at push."

Crawford's laugh was like thunder rolling. "Is Mafuyu the blonde I met?" he asked with a smirk and a flashing glint off his horn rimmed glasses.

"No," Ran said taking the joke as it was intended with good humour, "That's Riku, his mother owns the convenience store, Mafuyu's mother is Hinasaki Miyuki, you know the photographer." Crawford nodded though it was clear he had never heard of her. "He has a part time job helping the novelist Takamine Junsei." He continued, Crawford remained blank. "You didn't meet Mafuyu, and he was only teasing, they're calling you my sugar daddy."

Crawford smiled to himself at that information and Ran blushed bright red and hid his eyes under his bangs. "And what do you call me?"

"Crawford." Ran stuttered out and Crawford didn't know if that was his answer or an entreaty to stop, but Ran was adorable when he was flustered, and simply edible when he was embarrassed.

Crawford just smiled and drank from his coffee.

They were walking along side each other through Shibuya at night, the streets lit by the reflected glare of the shops and the streetlamps. Teenagers in gakuran and attempts at high fashion bundled about in tight knit covens and the occasional gothic kiss. Girls chattered and boys chattered and mobile phones glowed like lanterns in their hands. Some of the girls had oversized fashion dolls in their arms, or small battered plush. The boys were clustered together over benches sharing cups of warm cola and pointing at the girls as they paraded back and forth along the thoroughfare.

Crawford had a take out coffee in his hands as they walked. "This seems, rather," he paused looking for the word as he looked around the gathered youth and their territorial behaviour and mating habits, Ran expected a word about wildlife, "Japanese." He said. "In America they hang out in cafes and over pin ball machines arm in arm with some bored girl that they managed to coerce into accompanying them. It's very different."

Ran didn't know that he was being led. He was young and naïve like that. "What did you do? I mean, in America."

Crawford looked distant for a moment, "I lived in Germany for a long time," he said and sounded sad, "but I used to go to the batting cage and play baseball." He shook off the reverie and took a mouthful of coffee, as if to wash the bad taste down. "But what about you?"

"I've never played baseball." Ran said simply. "I was always too busy with kendo or my music."

Crawford grinned, it was a shark's grin all teeth and menace and Ran felt the familiar flip flop of his stomach and flutter of his heart that he got when Crawford looked at him like that. "Japan has plenty of batting cages," he said, "it was one of the first things I looked up when I arrived here, I'll teach you."

And with all the passion Ran felt in that moment he thought he might be sick.

The batting cage was down a back alley, it was floodlit and there were kids and middle aged salary men in the cages striking the white balls with a solid thwock noise, causing some of them to rattle against the back of the cage, whilst most hit the net behind them. Most of the salary men had come from the office, with their jackets hung behind them and their shirt sleeves rolled up, their glasses wedged under their helmets as they swung and struck and swung and missed at the flying white balls.

Crawford paid for the cage with a gold card and smiled at Ran as he led him to the end cage, unlocking the door with the key the assistant had given him. "This is really simple," he said as Ran pulled the ugly blue plastic helmet over his hair, "see the pressure plate, when you're ready stand on it and it will fire the ball at you, hit it with this." Crawford hefted the bat in his hand, "hardly a Louisville slugger but it'll do the job, just swing and hit it, like it was a sword in kendo."

Ran looked sceptical but did his best anyway, he adjusted his stance to the formal pose of kendo and stepped on the plate. The ball whizzed past him and hit the net.

Crawford laughed and Ran couldn't help but feel embarrassed.

"Here," he said, "I'll show you."

He took a helmet and slipped it on his head, then took the bat from Ran. He was bent at the hip and with a single motion hit the ball hard against the cage.

"Now, take the bat," Ran lifted the bat, "stand at the plate and I'll help." Ran looked a little baffled until Crawford slotted himself in behind him, his body heat blazing and his breath agitating the small sensitive hairs at the back of his neck. Ran couldn't help the erection that was forming as Crawford's hands found his hips and pulled them back into his own crotch. "don't be so stiff, be fluid, now raise the bat high," Ran did, his breath panting and catching and it was hard to breathe. "Swing."

Ran hit the ball, it was not the same powerful strike that Crawford had used, which didn't surprise Ran because he was shaking like a leaf and Crawford had to know that he was but Crawford remained the way he was, tucked in around Ran, his hands on his hips, his fingers feeling like brands and Crawford blazing hot behind him.

Ran took a shaky step forward, "careful," Crawford chided reaching out to pull him back but it was too late, the ball came flying at him in an arc and with a dull thump in the stomach. He doubled over as it knocked the air out of his lungs and a second ball shot out of the machine and caught him square on the cheekbone.

Crawford drove carefully checking constantly that Ran's ice pack was on his face, the boy's head was cast back against the headrest. "I still think it might be an idea to take you to emergency."

"I'm fine." Ran said from under the ice pack.

"I have some witch hazel back at the apartment," Crawford said adjusting the gear stick as he drove, "it'll bring out the bruising."

Crawford's apartment was on the second floor of a modest building not really that far from Ran's school. He helped Ran in and sat him down on the leather couch, that was flush against the wall as he went into the bathroom and came out with a packet of painkillers and a bottle of clear spirit. "This will sting but it means the bruise will come out quicker."

Ran tried to smile but hissed as it pulled the muscles on his cheek. "I'm just glad I'm not at school tomorrow," he said, "otherwise this would be murder to explain. No, I wasn't fighting, I got struck by a pair of errant baseballs."

"Let me see your stomach," Crawford said, "you might have cracked a rib."

Ran tugged up his tee even as he bit into his lip, even though it caused his face to hurt even more. Crawford's fingers were hot and firm against his stomach and Ran forgot to breathe, Crawfrod was so close over him, close enough that Ran could reach up and kiss him. He wondered where the idea came from. He pushed it down again as Crawford's hot dry hands ran across his stomach, he was glad that the icepack covered his blush. Crawford decently ignored his erection as if it wasn't there.

He poured the witch hazel on a cloth and leaning across Ran's body and started to dab it on the welt. It was red and angry and Ran didn't need to see it to know that. "Crawford," Ran squeaked, "I can't do this."

"Do what?" Crawford asked, the very picture of innocence.

"I like you." Ran squeaked.

"I like you too." Crawford said, swiping the liquor across his cheek.

"No, I like you." Ran repeated.

"I told you," Crawford said, pinning him in place with his thighs. "I like you too."

"No," Ran tried again, "I really like you."

"I really like you too," Crawford said and then the gap between them vanished into nothing and Crawford was kissing him.

Crawford's mouth was strong and hot like the rest of him and his hands were against Ran's sides, where his tee was pulled up and Ran's own hands were in cRawford's hair, when Crawford swiped his tongue over Ran's mouth Ran pulled back.

"I have to get home." Ran stammered.

Crawford pulled back, his hair dishevelled and his lips slightly swollen though Ran wasn't sure that they had kissed that much.

"What are you going to tell your parents?" he asked, "about the baseball I mean."

"I don't know." Ran stammered trying to breathe which was hard the way Crawford was pressed against him. "I, I'm supposed to be with Riku gaming." Crawford looked almost disappointed that Ran had lied to his parents about being with him. "I, I don't know what to do."

Crawford sat back and ran his hand through his hair, "call them, tell them you're staying over at Riku's tonight, you can stay in the spare room." He cupped Ran's cheek. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed you."

Ran looked sorry for himself. Crawford stood up and went to the fridge where he pulled out a pair of beer cans, he threw one of them at Ran who caught it, holding the chill metal against his face. "I really like you, Ran, you're so mature I keep forgetting you might not be ready. You can go home if you like, but I'd like it if you stayed."


	4. The Kindness of Strangers: Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Ba Ra Kei**

"_Hello darkness, my old friend,_  


_I've come to talk with you again,  
Because a vision softly creeping,_

_Left its seeds while I was sleeping."_

Ran sat in the emergency room next to Crawford, looking as sheepish as a puppy, with an ice pack on his face. Crawford had come clean to Ran's parents when it became apparent that there was more wrong than they had thought. He had phoned them, explained that there had been a minor accident in a batting cage and that he was awfully sorry, but it looked like Ran might have a minor concussion.

It turned out that he just had bruised ribs and a crack on his cheekbone, and now Ran sat waiting for the doctor to sign the form that would let him leave.

He held the icepack to his cheek as Crawford pulled faces at him, knowing perfectly well that it hurt to laugh.

Crawford had arranged with his parents that he was to stay with him tonight because after all he had to be woken on every hour and it was the least Crawford could do because it was his mistake that meant that the film wasn't on, and it had been his idea to go to the batting cage, and he knew how busy they both were at work, and between him and Schuldig, his poor put upon personal assistant, it really wasn't a bother.

Ran was astonished by just how simple they made it look. Whenever he had attempted lying to his parents, even such a simple and painless lie based on as much truth as this, it had all gone wrong and seen him confined to his room with the power shut off to stop him just playing on his games console and not appreciating his punishment, something which his sister had gleefully agreed with, and had even spurred his father on.

Ran's parents had consigned Ran's care unto Crawford with a remarkable amount of trust for someone that they had barely known for a month, but Ran didn't care. In fact if not for the amount of anaesthetic holding his face rigid Ran would have smiled. His heart was pounding, which he knew wasn't really happening because his bruised rib didn't hurt more with it, and his stomach was flip-flopping.

Crawford had kissed him.

He had kissed Crawford back.

He wanted Crawford to kiss him again.

He wanted Crawford to run his hands over his chest again as he had when he had felt his ribs.

He wanted to smile but instead his lips drooped and he drooled a little. He couldn't help it, his face was frozen, but Crawford just laughed and did a rather poor impression of Sylvester Stallone, which made him want to laugh but he couldn't because his chest hurt and his cheek hurt and his face was frozen. He couldn't even stick his tongue out.

Eventually the doctor came over with the forms and Crawford helped Ran to his feet, still teasing with quotes from movies Ran did not know.

Schuldig was waiting for them in Crawford's sleek black car, Crawford held open the back door for him and Ran slipped inside, "as a rule," Schuldig sneered, "when balls come flying at my face I tend to back off."

"You never were one for the rules, though, eh Schuldig?" Crawford answered climbing into the passenger side, "and you never cared for sports with sticks." Ran knew that there was something off in the conversation, something he didn't understand, but at the same time he knew he was not meant to. "Now safety first," Crawford said, "Buckle up."

Ran pulled the strap over and pulled it into place. "You should know, Fujimiya-kun," Schuldig said, "Crawford believes in safety first because he likes knowing what's going to happen, he does nothing without a plan."

"That's a good thing." Crawford said, "I don't like surprises."

"I don't like surprises either." Ran slurred, then wiped the drool from his chin. Then fell quiet as Schuldig gave him a dark look in the rear view and turned on the radio.

Schuldig only stayed as long as it took to help Ran up the stairs and pilfer a bottle of wine from the cabinet as thanks before he left with a rather Germanic salute to Crawford and an assurance he would pick up his dry cleaning for him tomorrow. Ran suspected that there was a lot going on between them that he would never understood but he didn't care because as much time as Crawford spent with Schuldig he was pushing his long term friend away to spend time with Ran.

He had confessed to Crawford.

Crawford had confessed to him.

They had kissed.

Ran kind of hoped that they would kiss again, well when he had regained feeling in his face.

There were boxes of noodles left out on the counter probably left out by Schuldig, but cold now. Crawford slammed them in the microwave and pulled some chopsticks from the drawer, flicking on the electric kettle all in a rather fluid set of movements.

"There are some sweats in the other room," Crawford said pulling plates down from the cupboard, closing the door with his forehead and the fridge with his hip. "Put them on whilst I get some supper, they should be more comfortable."

Ran stepped, with his hand pressed to his ribs, to where it hurt. There was a large imposing bed in the centre of the room with black cotton Manchester. There were black pillows and white painted wooden furniture on either side of the bed. The floor was a nice parquet but all four rugs, which were a white knotted wool, were surrounding the bed. The lamp was turned to the bed. Everything was turned to the bed and Ran's face was blazing, he was sure, under the anaesthetic.

There was a very ornate dressing table, which was covered almost entirely by flourishes and golden cherubs; it looked almost out of place. The mirror was swooping and gilded at the edges, there was even a small piano stool in front of it with a cushion with four golden tassels at the corners. It looked entirely out of place, because it was a lady's piece of furniture, and despite the ornate frippery of the dresser, it didn't look old or expensive. Sitting folded on it were two items of grey marl clothing. Ran lifted them and held them to his face; they smelled of jasmine and rice flowers and soap, detergent, they were obviously clean. But sitting next to them in a small square bottle with a bakelite lid, one with a rather simple plain white label stating it's contents, a pale gold liquid, was Crawford's after shave. He wore one that Ran had never heard of. Ran slipped off the lid and made a few sprays of the aftershave unto the sweater and then took a second deep breath of the fabric.

Now it smelled right.

He changed quickly into the hooded sweater and loose sweat pants. They were too big for him and the neck hung loose at his shoulder showing the skin, and he had to pull the trousers up every couple of steps despite the tie at the waist.

Crawford had laid out two bowls of microwaved noodles on the table with a piece of linen with a sheet of glass over it. There were bowls of tea and a light hung on a coiled spring from the ceiling. It made the apartment look rather homey. There was a plush couch with a battered looking cushion in one corner. The apartment was neat and slick, it had a look of obvious wealth and taste, but there were little details that revealed this place to be a home.

That made Ran feel more welcome, and this soft warm feeling in his stomach past the painkillers and the anaesthetic.

Crawford thumbed the remote and turned on some music, something soft and melodic with two men harmonising softly. It was soft and sweet and American and Ran fell in love all over again, to reheated noodles and music he didn't recognise, with a dull throbbing pain in his chest he couldn't believe was a bruised ribs.

"_Did she make you cry_  


_Make you break down_

_Shatter your illusions of love"_

Ran woke up in Crawford's wide bed and buried his face in the pillow smelling old sweat and aftershave and Crawford and wearing Crawford's sweats and in Crawford's room in Crawford's apartment and a raging erection that was so hard it almost hurt.

He stretched out, the fabric of the sweat shirt pulling up over his stomach and his pectorals, catching briefly on his nipples with a licking of lips as his fingers slowly slid down his stomach muscles, surrounded by Crawford's smell in Crawford's bed in front of Crawford's mirror.

His palm rubbed along the curve of his hipbone, circling the soft skin with his face buried in his pillow, taking deep breaths of the smell in the pillow. He drummed his fingers over the taut skin, pretending it was Crawford's hands then blushing bright red, and then trying to visualise Ai in his pace, but it couldn't stick. Ai didn't smell of lemons and tuberoses and herbs and musk and cordite. Ai smelt of night jasmine and lavender and apples and tea. The pillow smelled of musk and strength and old coffee so it was Crawford's hand he couldn't help but picture as his fingers, long thin and warm from the bed, slipped under the loose waist band of Crawford's sweat pants, scratching lightly through his pubic hair with short fingernails, before slipping down under his erection to cup his balls, rubbing them together and then bringing his palm up under his cock, squeezing gently before pulling up softly, the skin catching and pulling against his palm and he licked his lips again.

He rolled unto his side, letting the weight of his erection slap against his hand and tugged it, smoothing the loose skin up and down, fingers brushing the head and down, pressing hard on veins as his front teeth scraped over his lower lip again and again.

He came to himself quickly.

He couldn't do this here.

In Crawford's apartment.

In Crawford's bed.

In Crawford's pants.

He rolled to his feet and went into the small en-suite bathroom, opened the toilet lid and tried to finish with the sweat pants pooled around his ankles, one hand on the cistern and the bathroom door slightly ajar.

Eventually he had to open the bottle of Crawford's shampoo and the soothing smell of menthol and the tang of chemicals carried him over, jerking into the toilet bowl and muffling his grunts by biting down on his lip.

He was shocked when he saw himself in the mirror, Crawford's sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, flushed with orgasm and the entire side of his face swollen from the baseball. He was hideous, his hair stuck up at all angles, his face red, his lips chapped and, he cupped his hand over his mouth, and he had foul breath.

Crawford wouldn't see anything in someone like him.

He quickly yanked up the sweat pants, his cock still tender from the orgasm, and holding them up with one hand, as the flush started to fade from his throat, went in search of his host.

Crawford was at the stove cooking eggs. "Morning, sleepyhead," he said turning back with a smile, "I hope I didn't wake you."

Ran shook his head and yawned, covering his mouth with his free hand, "I slept like a dead thing."

"I must admit I managed to get in, have a shower and a shave without waking you." He winked at Ran, "you look cute asleep."

Ran blushed and tried to hide under his bangs, Crawford had slipped past him whilst he was sleeping. He could have been in any position, and knowing the one he woke up in he had had the sweat shirt pulled up around his arm pits and his ass in the air, with the sweatpants hung only on his hipbones.

"Want some eggs?" Crawford said scraping them from the pan unto the plate, "here," then he reached across and kissed Ran softly on the lips, just a brief chaste touch that made Ran's stomach turn over, "you're adorable when you blush, and I don't think you're hideous at all."

"I said that out loud." Ran wailed, trying to make a run for it back to the bedroom, but Crawford caught him by the arm and pulled him into his chest. His shirt was freshly laundered but still he smelt warm and male and of citrus and tube rose and so good, and there was coffee there and all Ran wanted to do was take a deep breath and stay like this forever, safe and warm in Crawford's arms as the coffee percolated and their eggs got cold and no one else mattered.

Nothing else mattered.

Crawford's finger found the underneath of his jaw and tilted it up, "I really like you," he said and then he kissed him. Crawford tasted of coffee and bacon and something else, and maple syrup and danger, and mint and fire and Ran found himself on tip toes to get more of that taste into his mouth, as Crawford ran his tongue over Ran's teeth and his hand settled into the curve at the small of his back, and it didn't matter suddenly that his sweat pants had slipped down so that they barely hung on him at all, or that the bacon was burning in the pan because Crawford was kissing him and Crawford's hand was on his bare skin and Ran loved him.

Crawford pulled back, "the bacon," he said dashing across the kitchen and dumping the contents of the pan into the sink with a sheepish look. "Want to go out for breakfast? I mean, if you don't mind going out with me."

"Like on a date?" Ran said hopefully.

"Exactly like on a date." Crawford confirmed and Ran didn't care that half of his face was bruised and one eye was swollen shut because Crawford didn't care.

"_I'm the king of cute with a talent for persuading_  


_will you be my guide_

_I need help to find my way out."_

The movie was expensive and meant to be important but most of the historical details were wrong and the premise was trite. Ran was at Crawford's, although his parents thought that he was at Mafuyu's, watching the movie on his television on Crawford's sofa with Crawford's arm over him.

"See," Crawford said, "any American worth his salt wouldn't bother with all this, we're all xenophobes."

Ran laughed as on the screen Tom Cruise managed to dress himself in rather complicated robes without any help, when most modern Japanese had to go to classes to manage the same thing. "I don't know," Ran laughed, "remember this is a historical action movie, it doesn't need to be accurate."

Crawford tilted his face and kissed him, because Ran loved to be kissed and his fingers slipped into the waistband of Ran's jeans but no further than that as Ran leant into him. When he pulled back he guiltily looked back at the movie, "well at least the Samurai is cool."

"Cool?" Ran laughed, batting him on the arm, "he is the king of cool, he's so cool he brings the winter with him. It doesn't show up until he's on screen. He appears and swish the enemy is dead," he mocked the gesture with his hands, "that's why guns are inelegant, they're noisy and any idiot can use one, it takes years of training to use a katana." Ran wasn't quite sure when he had been rolled unto his back but he had and Crawford was leaning over him.

"So," Crawford asked, "who'd win in a fight, Jet Li or Obi Wan Kenobi?"

Ran grinned, "Han Solo," he answered, "he's got a gun and he cheats."

Crawford laughed and Ran's smile was so naughty he had to kiss it, pushing Ran further into the sofa, laying his chest against Ran's and nudging Ran's legs apart. Ran loved to be kissed, to be kissed like this, where kissing was an end unto itself and not a goal. Ran wasn't ready for anything else, yet, but when he was, he thought, he wanted it to be with Crawford.

Crawford rolled down beside him so they were lying side by side on the sofa watching the movie, then they just started to listen to the movie as Ran turned to face him and Tom Cruise saved the world and the Samurai way of life for all they cared as they kissed and Crawford ran his fingers over Ran's face between kisses and his glasses were thrown out of the way as they tilted their faces together for a better fit, and Crawford's jaw was rough because he needed to shave and Ran didn't care.

"_If you want me to, boy_  


_I could lie to you_

_You don't need one of these_

_To get me inside of you"_

The club was bouncing. The music was throbbing. People were gyrating. Lights flashing. Smoke writhing. And Ran was in awe.

Milk was a famous club, not upmarket, but with a reputation that earned it's own rewards, and Ran was underage.

There was a band on the stage playing rock music the likes of which Ran had never heard before. There were girls in barely there skirts and torn tees waving their pink hair in time to the beat.

"glad you could make it, finally," Schuldig drawled as the two of them, Crawford in jeans and a black tee, "you left me waiting, what was it for? a quickie in the gents?"

Ran blushed bright red and tried to hide under his bangs. Crawford had dyed half of them black to match his black and red tee. "No," he protested under his hair.

"Whatever," Schuldig shrugged handing them both tall glasses of what appeared to be soda, "you missed the opening act."

"Great loss," Crawford shrugged looking at the bar, "they're all piss and wind anyway." He took a long deep draught of the glass, nearly emptying it.

Ran took a mouthful and then coughed, "careful, Katzchen," Schuldig said slapping him on the back, Schuldig always called him Katzchen, Ran just ignored it. "Don't swallow what you're not used to." He shared a smirk with Crawford who ignored him.

"What is this?"

"Rum and coke." Schuldig answered, "drink up, they don't let you take glasses into the pit."

"The pit?" Ran asked.

"The mosh pit." Crawford answered, and finished off his own glass, "it's not every day cool American bands play here, so hurry, before we miss the best spots."

"I never miss the best spot." Schuldig said with a bit of a leer.

"That's because you have bony elbows." Ran said innocently.

Crawford nearly choked as he laughed.

"Katzchen got claws," Schuldig laughed, "or do you…."

"Enough." Crawford cut him off, "now finish your drink and we can go listen to the band."

The pit was a morass of bodies pushed together into a too small space and seething like a tide. They rushed forward and pulled back as one to rush forward again to touch the band on stage.

The liquor was lying heavy on Ran's stomach making him feel light headed as he bounced and moved with the crowd. "Here," Schuldig said offering him part of a bottle of water, and as he pressed it into his hand he noticed a small white pill, "just a little something to help the alcohol settle, stops the hangovers, makes the evening burn a little brighter" so Ran swallowed it, washing it down with the water.

The band washed past him, the journey home washed past him in a swirl of laughter and Crawford asking "how many did you give him?"

"Just one." Schuldig replied, "you took more than that." It sounded like he was talking in a fog.

"I can't take him home like this." Crawford said, and it sounded like he was miles away, not sat in the front of the car driving, there was a happy song on the radio. Ran wanted to hum along but he thought he might be too drunk.

"Take him back to yours, tell his parents it was late and you thought it wouldn't matter, the concert over ran not that you got their precious baby off his head on the best Rosenkreuz can offer."

Ran just hummed along with the radio and settled back against the seat belt, he didn't remember putting on, using it as a pillow and fell asleep to the bumping of the car and the bickering of the two gaijin in the front as if they were reading him poetry.

He woke up on Crawford's couch with a quilt tucked about him and a thumping headache. Crawford sat on the floor near him, on the rug, with his glasses perched on his nose as he read from a book.

"Read to me." Ran said, feeling particularly sorry for himself.

Crawford offered him a smile, "there's water beside you, I'm sorry, you took it so badly."

Ran wanted to shrug but he hurt all over, he reached down and took a few mouthfuls of the blessedly cold water. "Read to me," he repeated a bit more plaintively this time.

Crawford offered him a small smile and nodded, reading in English.

"Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness Lady were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; "

Ran smiled and opened up his arms, "hold me," he said.

Crawford moved across the floor on hands and knees as Ran pushed himself to the back of the couch, quilt and all so Crawford might have room, but Crawford continued to read, from memory now. "Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart."

Ran silenced him with a kiss and was too tired and achy to protest when Crawford's hands moved down around his ass, when the words of the poem were thick among the kisses along his neck and he was tired but he wanted this, didn't he?

Crawford did, he could feel his hardness against him, he just didn't really know what it was. What was he meant to do? Was he meant to touch him? To kiss him back? To lie there and be seduced? Perhaps he was meant to encourage him? To move in a seductive manner? To groan? To moan?

He was overwhelmed and so when Crawford's hand slipped down the crack of his ass to rub the skin there Ran knew no other recourse but to open his mouth further, to cast his head back to bare more of his neck to Crawford's mouth and rub his own erection, though he wasn't sure when that had appeared, into Crawford's in time to the finger rubbing him, just rubbing him, and the words and the kisses and the rubbing.

He came.


	5. Hold on I'm falling, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Ba Ra Kei**

 

"__You'll never see - the courage I know__  
Its colours' richness won't appear within your view  
I'll never glow - the way that you glow  
Your presence dominates the judgements made on you "  


Crawford stood at the stereo with the lights down low rocking back and forth with his back to Ran as he danced, lost in the song he played, his hands on the counter. Ran smiled because Crawford didn't even realise he was doing it. He started, as softly and as slowly as he danced he began to sing along. Ran didn't know the song, but he didn't care.

"And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains" Crawford sang as he turned and realised Ran was there, because in the moment and the song he had forgotten that he was not alone, and for a moment he looked sheepish and embarrassed and then realised Ran didn't care, and that Ran was smiling because Ran adored him. So Crawford smiled and continued to sing along, almost subvocally, and opened his arms.

And Ran stepped into them like it was the most natural thing in the world to dance with another man, and Crawford rested his head in the tuck of his chin and just let Ran breathe him in as he sang along to the strange choral song. His hands were against Ran's waist and were warm and heavy. "In restless dreams I walked alone."And Ran just took a deep breath of him and listened.

Crawford's hands made slow circles on his back, pushing up the sweater there and his neck was warm so Aya couldn't resist licking it. It was just a little lick, mostly just pressing the very tip to the skin just to see what it tasted like. It tasted like sweat and alcohol and musk and something metallic and burned and then Crawford tilted his head down and kissed him.

Ran lived for Crawford's kisses.

Ran died for Crawford's kisses.

Crawford dipped his tongue inside Ran's mouth like a hummingbird at a blossom, licking the back of his teeth and up over his palate before sucking the taste of him back into his own mouth. His hands had reached up under his sweater to the skin there and his hands pulsed, slightly moving and still they danced to the strange American song that Ran did not know. His hips were rubbing against the tops of Crawford's thighs and he could feel himself harden, as Crawford slipped his tongue into his mouth.

Crawford's fingers closed around the hem of Ran's sweater and as he rubbed his hips against Crawford's thighs he felt Crawford pull it up, breaking their mouths apart just long enough to toss the sweater out of the way. His hands, which had rested flat on Crawford's sternum moved to the buttons of his shirt, fumbling with them and then reaching inside to the skin there, hot and the hairs that crinkled under his fingers and Crawford leant forward and rocked and as he did so he walked Ran into the bedroom.

Ran lost his balance when the bed hit the back of his knees and it didn't matter because his hands were in Crawford's shirt, and Crawford's were on his back and Crawford was kissing him and pressing his thigh between Ran's legs and the song was playing and so Ran let himself fall.

The coverlet was a dark green that was almost black and tactile, like velvet, the knap of it caught the light in waves and it was soft and almost fur against his back as Crawford inched him up the bed to the pillows, which were the same colour but a heavy linen, and Ran looked up at him, with lips kiss swollen and eyes heavy lidded.

Crawford looked hungry, kneeling over him, as he removed his shirt and Ran wanted to help him but if he did he would lose contact with Crawford's skin. Crawford's skin was golden and the fabric was so dark and rich and his lips were kiss swollen too and his eyes, under his glasses and a spray of dishevelled hair, were like gold beads.

Ran wondered how it was possible to not love him.

He reached up and took off Crawford's glasses, wondering for a moment just how much softer it made him look. For a moment Crawford even looked vulnerable. He set them down on the bedside table and then reached up to cup Crawford's face between his palms. He stared at him and smiled and it was a soft smile, the one that sparkled in his eyes and played at the corner of his mouth, the one Shiori called his Ai smile, and she was right and she was wrong because it was love, but it was not Ai.

Crawford smiled back, that special smile that was almost a frown and then pressed down and kissed him.

Ran loved to kiss, to kiss as if he could, by very virtue of spit and spirit, become part of Crawford and Crawford was content to let him as his palms stroked the plains of his stomach, never reaching up to his nipples or down to the bowl of his pelvis. Like the song that played in the other room it was slow and sweet and Crawford was softly sucking on his tongue, and he didn't mind the way that Ran raised his hand along his sternum, feeling the hairs crinkle and crunch there under the pads of his fingers.

Crawford was a heavy weight between his thighs and that was where Ran wanted him to stay forever. There was a curious mix of sensations, of skin and heat and weight and velvet and crisp male hair and the wondrous sucking on his tongue and Ran rocked up into it, into the answering bulge in Crawford's jeans and Crawford let him.

He came with a gasp but Crawford didn't, he just raised his head, pulling away from the kiss by sucking out the lip and smiled, before he began to kiss along his jaw, his hands starting to work on the belt as Ran lay boneless beneath him.

When his trousers were opened Crawford pulled them down gently, gathering up his briefs at the same time, and then lowered his mouth to the evidence of Ran's orgasm. He had never done this before.

His tongue was hot and torturous as he slowly lapped away the sweat and semen staining his thighs and into the pubic hair, with long slow strokes and all Ran could do was press the back of his hand to his eyes and feel as Crawford lapped and hummed and his thumbs made cooing circles on his stomach.

Ran had never known anything like this.

He felt cherished and precious and it was too much and he wanted to be aroused, because surely that was the point of this, but it was too soon and he was too tender, to open and all he could do was lie back and feel.

Crawford nuzzled the flesh with his nose, even as he lapped and Ran was falling, falling into this. How could he not when it felt so good and he felt so cherished and worshipped and Crawford's tongue was hot and soft and his thumbs. Ran felt new under his hands even as his cock hardened and Crawford looked up at him and smiled and began to use more determined licks, and his breath parted the red curls and Ran just arched and felt.

His hand, his left hand because his right was currently bearing down against the bridge of his nose, was making scrabbling motions trying to find purchase in the bedspread but his own weight against it prevented it.

Ran could be naive, he knew that, and he had a basic education in the aspects of man to man sex, that he had garnered from listening to girls on the subway and Shiori's rather large collection of yaoi manga, but nothing, even hours of rather detailed lecture could have prepared him for the moment where Crawford opened his mouth and took the very head of his cock inside.

Ran thought he might die.

He thought he might want to.

He wasn't sure he hadn't, but the image of Crawford's dark head was burned into his retinas. Crawford splayed his hand on Ran's stomach and looked up at him and chuckled and Ran wanted to arch, to pull back, to laugh, to cry and he didn't know what to do so he simply trusted Crawford and against his own instinct moaned.

Ran knew, rather than could see Crawford smile.

Crawford got up then, and opened his trousers and Ran didn't know whether to look, whether he was meant to, what he was supposed to say, suddenly the comments he had garnered from the manga really didn't feel appropriate and Crawford just leaned forward, ignoring his obvious inability to make a decision and smiled against his lips fondly then kissed him.

Ran knew how to react to that. He kissed him back.

He was aware of Crawford reaching into the bedside cabinet but really didn't care. He was aware that Crawford was hard against his stomach, and that it was larger than he had thought it would be, and he couldn't see it and he wasn't sure that didn't make it worse. But Crawford was hard and hot and he pressed down and Ran wanted this, didn't he?

He wanted Crawford to put his mouth back, he was quite sure of that.

Crawford's mouth burned a trail down the side of his face, along his neck, which felt much better than it should have, chuckling against his nipples but lavishing them with attention, which confused Ran because he was a girl and you kissed a girl's nipples. Crawford sucked on one of them and Ran wasn't confused any more, he just didn't care. It felt that wondrous and new he would be quite content if Crawford never stopped.

He didn't hear the cap being popped open, but he was aware of Crawford's finger suddenly being cold and slick and there. Crawford had touched him before there, and it felt good so he relaxed into it.

Crawford lowered his mouth the same time he slipped his finger inside Ran causing him to buck up into that hot warmth with the surprise. Ran just opened his mouth a little more and groaned. So Crawford fingered him and bobbed his head and Ran just surrendered to those strong fingers, he was quite sure there was two, when had that happened? did he care? and that wonderful mouth.

He reacted with a soft scream he couldn't quite control as Crawford touched some place inside of him that ended the world.

But Crawford didn't stop, even as he thrummed and panted and clutched at the coverlet Crawford raised his hips in his hands and pressed something hard and blunt and larger than fingers against his ass and then with a sound, he had rather thought would be a pop but was more of a ngh, Crawford pushed inside him.

It didn't last long. They were both primed for a quick release. Crawford pushed inside him and just sat there, trying to control his breath and his hair fell across his forehead and he looked a little lost for a moment so Ran reached up to touch his face and then he moved.

Crawford came on the upstroke and Ran seeing his control waver, seeing a hearty red flush spread across his chest and throat came too.

When he caught his breath, and Ran was wondering how me managed to stay so calm, Crawford's thumb wiped away tears from his cheeks he hadn't known he'd shed and hushed him, and tangled together, covered in sweat and saliva and semen, Ran slowly fell asleep with Crawford's thigh a hard length pressing him into the Manchester as Crawford softly sang under his breath, "long adrift on shipless oceans, I did all my best to smile, til your singing eyes and fingers, drew me loving into your eyes."

 

"_Make a circle in the sand_

_Make a halo with your hand_

_I'll make a place for you to land."_

Aya had clearly left the notebook where Ran would find it following last night's argument. They had screeched at each other like monkeys, before Ran had finally, faced with either murdering his sister or leaving, snatched up his satchel and gone to Crawford's.

Crawford hadn't been in but it had given Ran some place to cool down, opening the door with his key and kicking at an offending cushion that just happened to be in the wrong place, left from the night before where they had lain on the floor and... and he had canted his hips and... and then... and...

There was a time when he would have gone to Mafuyu, but since his mother's suicide it was not the best place to just appear and whine. In the month since it had happened it had driven a wedge between them because Ran didn't know what to say so he said nothing. He just turned to Crawford more and more, because Crawford was safe and warm and...

When he touched him there he... or there, or...

The notebook was a clear insult.

It was just a notebook that any girl might buy, with Sanrio on the cover, but she had left it and it's heart speckled pages open deliberately. It held a collection of cards from a florist with a name about some kitten, and the handwriting was Crawford's. He didn't even read them because written all over the pages, with pieces of jewellery and mobile phone aerial dangles taped in, and written all over the pages, on every page was some variation of the legend "Mrs Aya Crawford."

She had done it so he would see.

It had been, after all, the focus of their screaming match the night before.

Crawford had sent her a huge bunch of flowers, Ran knew it was only an apology for keeping her brother away the way he did with their parents so busy at work. Aya had screamed that Crawford liked her and that was why he sent her the gifts, some of which were very expensive, but Ran had screamed back that she was a silly girl and didn't know what she was talking about, after all why would a sophisticated gentleman like Crawford want anything to do with her, when she still watched Sailor Moon reruns and wore her hair in plaits and went to bed with a stuffed penguin.

Aya had screamed back that Ran was just jealous because he was physically incapable of getting himself a girlfriend even with Crawford's help with all the tickets and things. Ha, he could get Ran a prostitute and he'd still strike out.

Ran had been one breath away from explaining to his sister, at some length with considerable detail, exactly why Crawford wouldn't get him a prostitute.

So Ran had slammed the door, left his sister to fend for herself and gone to Crawford's empty apartment, kicked around a cushion, then curled into a foetal ball around Crawford's pillow and went to sleep.

When he returned home Aya was not in the house, she had probably gone to a friend's, but the notebook with Crawford's cards and jewellery and gifts was left open where he could see it.

He swept the book from the table and went upstairs, changing quickly for his part time job. He was a waiter in a reasonably busy American style diner, wearing black trousers and a white pin-tucked shirt. He cycled over to the restaurant, hanging his coat up with a growl.

"Woah," one of the other waiters said, "someone didn't get any last night."

Ran took a breath before answering, "I have a sister." as if it explained everything. The other waiter just decided that was all that needed to be said on that topic.

Ran was on break, sitting in the alley behind the restaurant and sharing a surreptitious cigarette with one of his co workers, and a cup of warm watery cola. He did not smoke, but occasionally, usually because of Aya, he would take a drag, and hold it till it prickled before letting it out in a slow exhale. He and Renji didn't talk much, they didn't have the kind of job that gave them much in common except an abiding hatred of people. There was nothing, Ran thought, to create sociopaths than working as a waiter, he was goosed, ignored, people were rude to him and messy. He was sure that people came to the conclusion that paying for food gave them the right to become animals, and his day hadn't started well before an eight hour shift looking after Tokyo's teenagers as they popped gum in his face and treated him like a second class citizen. Sometimes he wanted to take his father's katana off the wall where it hung and go on a mad killing spree like those American teenagers he heard about, and he'd go "you take a job in food service," and laugh.

Instead he shared Renji's cigarettes as his co worker said nothing and chain smoked himself into an early grave, because death had to be better than minimum wage silver service.

He had a plan for this evening, he'd call his parents and leave a message on the machine saying he was going gaming with Riku but he was going to go to Crawford and whine for a little while whilst Crawford nodded and understood and agreed and then put his hands there, and his mouth there, and murmured, the way he always did, that Ran looked hot in his work clothes and Ran suddenly wouldn't care that people were animals just that Crawford looked at him and touched him and wanted him.

"Hey Ran," Matsumoto said popping his head around the heavy fire door, "there's a girl here to see you."

For a second Ran frowned wondering who might come and see him here, Ai wouldn't, she had said that this kind of place was beneath her, if Shiori did it was always with a trail of younger siblings, and that left Nana, and well, no one ever saw Nana outside of school. He couldn't, for the life of him, who else might come and see him.

He had a momentary terror that it was Crawford's wife. He hadn't mentioned he had one but you never knew and he'd seen enough soap operas to know that was what happened.

He decided that was useless because after all Matsumoto had said girl and not woman or lady.

Crawford would be married to a lady.

He finished the cigarette he had been worrying, stubbing it out beneath his heel before swallowing the cola almost whole, grimacing because it was warm and watery, before he ran his hand through his hair, mussing it out of the gel that held it in place for work, and went out to see who had come for him.

Aya stood at the door way in a sweater and vest, she knew she looked pretty but still managed to stand demurely, with her arms behind her back and her hips thrust forward behind them. "Aya-chan enters! Heh heh... I'm here!" There were two boys behind her gaping, both wore sports jerseys and one was clearly younger than the other, perhaps by as much as two years. They were definitely younger than Aya. They were gaping at her, the older one, his hair a mass of spikes, fascinated by her hair, but the younger one scowled and didn't seem to like it one little bit.

Ran didn't like it. And he hadn't forgiven her for earlier. "Aya... What did I say about coming to the restaurant..." He chided.

Aya decided she could smile away her brother's scorn. "But... today's Saturday. Couldn't we eat lunch together...?"

Ran scowled "But..." He took a deep breath, Go sit at the counter... It's going to take just a bit longer." He really couldn't say no to her when she was like this and there were two sportsmen behind him that needed to understand why one did not look at his sister that way, especially with the day he'd had.

"Yaaay!" Aya enthused, convinced he had forgiven her, which he hadn't. "I love you!" She gave him her biggest smile as Obayashi handed her a glass of orange soda. It had a straw that she played with rather than drinking, knowing that the two boys were looking at her and liking it.

Ran looked across at Obayashi, he had black hair that covered his face and looked at Aya with respect. "Sorry... this's important... could you take over my shift?" Ran asked, and Obayashi nodded. Ran was always the first to cover for anyone else.

"What? Yeah, sure. ('s that girl here -again-?)" Obayashi asked, "Fujimiya, so you're working here for that girl?" He waggled his eyebrows.

Ran blushed furiously under his hair "Aaaah? How'd you know that? I told everyone it was so I could go to ToDai."

Obayashi smiled " She told me she talked her folks into sending her abroad What was it... to a nursing academy?"

"Yeah," Ran answered calmly, "she's a serious and very stubborn girl."

As he pulled his apron off he walked past the television, half sure he had just heard his own name, "treat her right," Obayashi teased, "or I'll have to take her off you."

This time he was sure he heard the television say clearly Fujimiya so he looked at it properly.

"_Foreign Trading Company Giants - Fujimiya, an affiliate of Takatori Enterprises, Products Found to Include Illegal Narcotics by Law Enforcement - Official Documents Seized and being Sent to Prosecutor. Live TV Broadcast"_

 

"_Hold On, I'm falling,_

_Can't breathe, breathe_

_Hold on, and hold on_

_Just hold on to me"_

Ran got out of the taxi and joined the crowd, pulling Aya behind him without care that he hurt her in his urgency. In the cab he had tried to phone his parents but got no answer, and none from Crawford either. He didn't know what was happening or what to think. He wasn't entirely sure that he was thinking.

He wanted to run away.

He wanted to know what was happening.

He wanted to find Crawford.

He wanted answers.

He wanted Crawford to wrap his arms around him and softly hum the strange song about the boat that he sometimes sung to calm Ran after, when the aftershocks of orgasm left him vulnerable.

There was a huge crowd but Ran still felt alone in it.

Then he stopped and looked around. "Someone's watching me." He said, but the only person he could see that it might be had bright orange hair and a yellow bandanna, other than that he stood too far away to be recognised, but there was something about him that Ran recognised as familiar. He went to turn to Aya but a man barged between them, pushing Aya away as he jostled for place.

The man with the orange hair just laughed and the world ended.


	6. Hold on I'm falling, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Ba Ra Kei**

_"I've got nothing to do_

_but hang around _

_and get screwed up on you."_

The smell was pervasive and cruel, antiseptic and bleach and an underlying core of something sweet and rotten.

Everything was polished to a dull sheen.

Ran sat beside the hospital room, still stinking of smoke and debris. There were pieces of grit in his hair and he had swatted and swore at a nurse who had tried to put antiseptic on the thin cut on his forehead.

He waited.

The police came and asked him questions. He didn't really register what they said. They asked about his parents smuggling in large amounts of drugs and other contrabands and Ran didn't know how to answer them other than he didn't believe that they would do that. His parents worked too much but they wouldn't do that. They were good people. He told the police that. They wrote it all down and then spoke to the doctors, then they left.

It got dark.

One of the nurses brought him a bento. It looked homemade and he suspected it was her meal for her break.

He didn't eat it.

He thought he might be sick looking at the rice and wondered if he had a concussion.

He rang Crawford's mobile for the twenty seventh time and still received no answer.

He wondered if he had no reception.

He opened the bento for the fifth time and felt the familiar nausea at the thought of the rice balls.

"Go home." One of the nurses said, standing facing him, she was quickly finishing a cigarette, "you need it." At Ran's desolate look she added. "We can call you."

"I don't have anywhere to go." Ran told her.

"Look," she said calmly, "You can't stay here, kid, and I know you're worried about your sister, but she's in surgery now, and won't come out for hours, go home, get something to eat, a shower, some sleep and come back when you have, if anything changes we'll call you."

"The police seized the house." Ran said with wide eyes.

"What about that person you keep phoning, kid, go to her."

Ran swallowed and wondered what else he could do, Crawford would be busy at work, that would be why he wasn't answering the phone, there would be all sorts of repercussions because of the explosion, he'd be busy, and he had given Ran a key.

_I've got my head, but my head is unraveling_  
Can't keep control, can't keep track of where it's traveling  
I've got my heart but my heart is no good  
And you're the only one that's understood

Crawford's apartment was empty when he got there, handing over the last yen from his wallet to the taxi driver. He climbed the stairs with his head down and keyed the door. "I'm here," he shouted, but there was no answer. The lights were out and there was a pile of dirty dishes stood in the sink, the curtains were open to the fading daylight and the place felt empty for the first time.

He turned on the lights, and the radio so that it might not feel so very empty, and then closing the curtains stripped and stepped into the shower. He had the water blistering hot but although it washed away the debris of the explosion, it couldn't wash away the oily film that he felt covered him.

When he stepped out he pulled on a pair of briefs he had left there before, secure that Crawford would have laundered them because he always had before, and saw, across the back of the wooden chair in the bedroom, a dark rust coloured rib sweater with a roll neck. He picked it up and took a deep breath of the soft alpaca wool, it still smelled of Crawford and he remembered Crawford wearing it only a few days before, sat with him watching trash on the TV and laughing.

He pulled the sweater up over his head and collapsed heavily unto the unmade bed, just breathing Crawford in because he wanted Crawford to be there. He wanted Crawford to wrap his arms about him and hold him and tell him it would all be okay, that he would be okay, that Aya would be okay and he wasn't being selfish. But Crawford wasn't there.

Despite himself and his best intention, fists balled up in Crawford's comforter, teary face smashed into Crawford's pillow, wearing only briefs and Crawford's rust coloured sweater.

_Now I know you won't refuse_

_Because we've got so much to do_

_And you've got nothing more to lose_

_So take this number, and welcome_

The woman's hair was dyed the same colour as his own, Ran noticed that, and she wore a strict suit, much stricter than those the office ladies usually favoured, in a dark indigo that highlighted her hair, bound in two long curls about her head, and she chewed on her pen as she wrote down the information that she took from him.

She had introduced herself as Kitada-san and had taken him from the hospital under the guise of having more questions for him. She said she was part of the police force, which was almost true because she was the secretary for a high ranking officer.

"Ran-kun," she said finally, laying down her pen on the paper, "it's a terrible tragedy, and I am very sorry for your loss."

Ran blinked, because of all the things he had expected her to say, he hadn't expected that. "Especially as we all know that Takatori engineered it, unfortunately we can't prove it." She lifted her pen and tapped it against her painted lips, "that's the problem today, sometimes we know something but our proof won't stand up in a court of law." She sighed, "and of course with the Takatori seizing your assets for themselves you won't even be able to pay your sister's medical bills," she tapped the pen again, "which means of course the absolute basic minimum of care." She looked at him, fixing him in place with her gaze, "I imagine you'd do anything to avoid that."

"What can I do?" Ran asked, "I have three months of school left before I get my leaver's certificate, I can keep myself, I have somewhere to stay, but I can't look after Aya-chan."

"It's terrible," she said, "I know that, and even if i wanted to I couldn't afford that kind of bill, you'd need to have some corporation the size of the Takatori looking after her to fund the advances, I understand she may never come out of the coma."

Ran wanted to say something but the words weren't there.

"What if I could offer you an alternative, a way to pay for the treatment and to get revenge on the one who did this to you." Her tone was seductive, laden with promise.

"But you just said there was no proof that would stand up in court."

"There's not, and there's not enough yet to move against such a powerful figure, I'm sure you know he has political aspirations." She tapped her pen again, shifting her thighs under the table, "it would be a terrible insult, I suppose, the man who killed my parents becoming prime minister and being unable to do anything about it."

"I don't understand." Ran said finally, unable to maintain her gaze.

"What if there were a way to move outside the courts, to bring him, and those like him, down." She licked her lips, and her eyes were glistening, "a family concern, that would take care of your sister, and would provide everything you need, a job, security, and in exchange you'd just do some little things for us."

"I'm not joining the Yakuza." Ran said firmly, "even hypothetically."

Kitada-san laughed, a rich throaty sound that made her tremendous bosoms bounce. She noted that Ran didn't seem affected by the show. "I represent an underground group called Kritiker," she said, "we're not Yakuza, we stand outside the law to punish those that the law cannot."

"How?" Ran asked.

She hadn't been expecting that for she blinked in surprise, "depends on the case, we might find information to feed to the law that the law could not get itself, we might bankrupt the person, ruin his political chances." She let him savour those words, applying them to Takatori, "in some cases, when there is no alternative, we kill them."

She watched him carefully, but his expression didn't change, if anything it became more set. "Mostly, for an entry level member it would be information gathering, nothing more complicated, we have special teams for special purposes, teams that specialise in breaking and entering, illegal surveillance and of course, wet work."

Ran nodded. "And where would I fit into this?" He asked, "hypothetically of course."

"Of course," she agreed. "We have an installation in Sendai, the Aoba flower centre, it would be a great place to train you, to defend yourself and in Kritiker protocol, two of our senior members manage the team and it's sedate. There is one other there training, and it would allow you to finish school there in Sendai."

Ran nodded. "And Takatori?" He asked.

"We have our sights on him. Are you coming aboard?" Kitada asked, but she knew the answer already, she had led him here so carefully after all.

"You'll look after Aya."

"We'll pay her bills and you can pay us back out of the substantial pay-check we'll give you, think of it as a lien." She smiled and offered her hand across the table for him to shake. "Welcome to Kritiker, Fujimiya-kun. I'll get your travel arrangements sorted out as soon as possible and let Shion know you're coming."

_You're just like an angel_

_Your skin makes me cry_

Kuroyuki's kisses were bitter and tinged a little with desperation as his fingers twisted in Ran's rust coloured sweater that repeated washings had turned a dull orange colour. He licked his lips a little too much and because of that his kisses were sloppy. He was handsome though, in a plain kind of way, and he wanted this, Ran wondered if it was too much to give. The problem was, that even now, months after he had seen him, months after being abandoned, and it was clear that he had been, his heart belonged to Crawford.

He knew, dispassionately, that the feeling wouldn't be this strong if things had been allowed to end naturally, if they had simply grown apart as couples do, but Crawford had simply vanished.

Kuroyuki's wet kisses trailed along his cheek to his earlobe, then down against the edge of the soft sweater and nuzzling against his neck. For a whole moment Ran considered pushing him away, again.

"You might as well let him, kid," the voice said from the corner, as always Kuroyuki couldn't see Schuldig, bright blue hair and purple hand knit sweater, torn jeans and perfumed cigarette. Ran had long since come to terms with this particular delusion. Sometimes he changed his hair colour, sometimes other details, but he always stood there, louche and self assured, smoking his clove scented cigarettes and sometimes his advice was sound.

Ran still didn't know why his subconscious had manifested as this, his imaginary Schuldig, but he had long since given up trying to understand or prevent it.

Ignoring him hadn't worked.

Attacking him hadn't worked.

And the tragedy was, even if he was talking to himself, as he suspected he was, his imaginary Schuldig understood.

"He might get better with a little practice." He took a long drag on his cigarette, "we're all a little shit at first, you can move his hands to where you want them, you know." Ran looked over Kuroyuki's shoulder at the imaginary Schuldig then sat back with a sigh.

"I'm not ready yet." He said quietly, knowing Koroyuki would honour it, that Kuroyuki was young and a little clumsy but honourable. He wasn't Kikyou with the lingering eyes or Shion's cold disdain. Kuroyuki was witty and fun and he wanted this, but Ran didn't. Ran still wanted Crawford. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Kuroyuki's smile was sunny and warm and Ran wanted to bask in it, "if you're not ready, you're not ready." He lay back against the wall of his small cubicle and grinned, it was the sort of grin that a person could hide in. "Besides, you might be ready in ten minutes or ten years, I'll wait."

It made Ran feel guilty. He stood up and pulled down the sweater, unsure of when it had rucked up around his waist. Schuldig looked slightly sad, and then pasted on his shit eating grin, "take a walk, kid, clear your head, hell, show me some of this country-shit."

Ran thought it was the best idea his particular lunacy had had. "I'm going to go for a walk, if Shion asks I won't be that long, I'm just going to go to the waterfall and back." He sighed. "I just need to think."

Kuroyuki grinned at him and pulled down Ran's hand and laid a kiss on the back like a gentleman greeting a lady, "like you'd miss anything here, anyway."

When Ran returned to the compound everyone was dead and the Aoba flower centre burned.

_Leave me out with the waste_  
This is not what I do  
It's the wrong kind of place  
To be thinking of you 

Bishop, Reiichi, adjusted his glasses nervously as he sat across from Ran. Ran knew what was coming, he didn't need his imaginary Schuldig to tell him that he was being cast aside. He had only been a temporary stop gap anyway whilst their own team member was out of action. Ran knew that when he left this room he would no longer be the Red Rook of Crashers and Kitada-san would have to find him another team.

"I don't like to have to do this, Ran," Bishop, Reiichi, said solemnly, "it would be easier if there was any issue with your work, or even if I didn't like you, the problem is Yuushi." He moved his cup on the table that sat between them. "The two of you are too alike to actually work together long term and he has been a respected member of the team for nearly two years now." It was a brush off, last one in first one out, "if I could see any way the two of you could come to some sort of compromise..."

"If you fucked blondie." Imaginary Schuldig sneered, "or showed a little throat..."

"There would be no problem adding you to the team, you get along well with everyone else, but Knight, Yuushi, is our friend and we have to do what's best for both of you, and I think in this case that it would be best, in both of your cases, if you joined another team, perhaps not being in each other's faces the way you are you two could even become friends."

Imaginary Schuldig was making faces behind him, mocking Reiichi's mannerisms with an exaggerated flourish. "Face it, kid, unless you drop trou for blondie, you two are never going to get along, and besides, he's not even that hot a piece of ass."

"I understand," Ran said calmly, trying his best to ignore Imaginary Schuldig's antics.

"Hey, you know, kid," Imaginary Schuldig said softly, and then began to sing, "maybe this time I'll be lucky, maybe this time he'll stay."

Reiichi was still talking but Ran could only see Schuldig, who had at some point put on a wig, hot pants and a bra top, that was not flattering, and was performing a rather ouvre performance of Cabaret in his head. He was trying his best not to laugh. Imaginary Schuldig had been right again, Crashers had not been the place for him, no one but Imaginary Schuldig would ever understand anyway, and it didn't matter that he'd be alone all his life, he had his own strange little hallucination and he had known love, what more did a person need anyway. Even if that love was now twisted into a burning hate-love hybrid where if Crawford contacted him tomorrow he wasn't sure if he'd kiss or kill him.

"I've heard," Reiichi said, "that there may be an opening in Tokyo that might be better suited for you. How does that sound? I can talk to Queen, and see what's best."

"I have my own place in Tokyo." Ran said calmly, ignoring the tumult inside him, and he did, Crawford had never come back, or claimed the apartment, he'd never sold it, and just left it there, in case Ran needed it obviously, something that meant he would never lose it like everything else he had. He had never even removed his things. If only, Ran thought, he could decide if he loved or hated him.

"I'm so sorry, Ran, because it is genuinely our loss, but I can see no other alternative."

Ran nodded, but didn't even bother to fake a smile, "I understand. Tell Queen I'll be in Tokyo when she wants to contact me, she has my cell."

Reiichi nodded. "Don't be a stranger, I'm asking you to leave the team so we can stay friends without ripping the team in two."

"I know." Ran said, "and I don't hold it against you. I was only a temporary member anyway."

_Use your eyes as weapons_  
Deep in the night time sky  
Choose your words so slowly  
To watch you now I wonder why 

Ran had found Shion's katana in the ashes of Aoba. The handle and scabbard had been ruined but a few paychecks from Crashers had seen the craftsman mend it, tutting all the while about the terrible things that happened to beautiful swords, and of course Ran had to know how beautiful this sword was.

Such swords had names, the sword maker told him, did Ran know this one's name, and Imaginary Schuldig had stood there, beside the bucket of oil quench and said "Shion," and it had become the sword's name.

It took the best part of a year before the sword maker had decided he was happy with his work, repointing the engraving, finding the best sharkskin for the handle and then fine silk cord the colour of Ran's hair. He had even made a new guard. He had done what he considered some of his best restoration work but he only charged Ran for a minimum of the work, claiming the ability to work on such an item was reward in itself. He had worked on it in what should have been his spare time, and when it was restored to it's full glory Ran almost felt ashamed for what he was about to use this sword for.

The coat he had found in Crawford's closet in the apartment, a wonder of leather and straps that didn't prevent movement but would prevent blood staining his clothes. There was a coating on the leather that would prevent the blood soaking into and ruining the leather, but for that the coat was still matte. It was a very expensive coat and to Ran's surprise it was more his size than Crawford's, and he couldn't really remember having seen it before. It didn't matter, it suited his purposes.

There were car keys hanging on the wall and Ran knew that they were for a white Porsche 927 that was in the parking garage, just something else Crawford had abandoned with him. It suited his purposes well enough.

The business man had begged and pleaded, the way that they all did at first, and even with his imaginary Schuldig stood there making faces and snide comments Ran felt nothing as he tore through the man with his restored Katana. He wondered if he would ever feel anything again.

He thought he heard someone say Green light but couldn't be sure because it was in English and he was on a rooftop in Tokyo then a figure in a denim jacket lunged at him from nowhere. On his hands glowed sharp knives and Ran stepped aside calmly and deflected the blades. He had found a calm place inside his rage, somewhere where the world was almost in slow motion. He threw the figure back and then went to move but was held in place by something, he looked around to see a tall thin figure in black holding something that glinted in the artificial lights on the ceiling.

"Hey Birman," the figure called, "he's all yours."

The woman had dark hair, pinned up and wore the same kind of strictly sexual suit as Kitada had always favoured, in her hands she carried a handgun which she pointed at his head. "I have a proposition for you," she said and smiled. Her lipstick was bubblegum pink but her suit was blue, she had the same smug expression as Kitada-san, this woman worked for Kritiker. "Be my dog or die."

Then she threw a card down at his feet, "see you in the morning," she said and as she walked away the tall figure let his wire loose and then they were gone, melted into the Tokyo night.

"Welcome to your new team," Schuldig said, sitting on the air conditioning unit, "Kritiker should get an Oscar for all this theatricality."


	7. Hold on I'm falling, part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ba Ra Kei

"_To me, you're strange and you're beautiful,_  


_ You'd be so perfect with me but you just can't see,  
You turn every head but you don't see me."_

The first blow caught him unawares, the dark haired young man turned and his fist caught him on the side of the face. Ran took it, rocked back on his heels the way Shion had taught him to lessen the force of the blow, which might otherwise have broken his jaw. He used that same movement to bring his own fist up, catching the boy in the sternum. From then on it turned into a brawl. There was the sound of terracotta pots, from the florist shop crashing into the tile floor. There was then a high pitched voice and when Ran turned to the sound the brown haired boy caught him on the cheekbone and knocked him clean out.

Ran was dreaming.

_Aah... Everything inside hurts..._

_Where am I? I can't think straight at all... _

_But..._

_It's a really great feeling..._

_I don't think I've felt this good for... a very long time_

Ran knew that Aya always set her sights on things greater and greater than he would. He was dreaming in the first person, talking to himself within the dream. She would tell me to live for the sake of others in this world.

_But I would always keep one hand for my own self._

_However._

_I would perjure our dead father and mother if only that would let you live._

_Let Aya's dream help me_

_Because I have nothing else._

_Even with that, I can't hear her voice_

_And that hurts so badly.  
_

_I _want_ to hear... _

He reached out for her but the bed started to stretch away and she sat at the other end, laughing and smiling and beautiful.

He wanted to reach her "Naa, say something to me. Tell me you want some chocolate mint pie or something . -Anything-. Even... your brother, Ran. Eh? Are you crying? I'm sorry. I'm a terrible brother. I'll stay by your side forever. But you mustn't approach any closer that that. Please don't cry."

"The one crying is you," a male voice said, and Ran knew it was Schuldig, without knowing why. "So you understand now. You invest your cash in your sister's health... But you find that you can't look her in the eye," why was Schuldig telling him these things, different from his imaginary Schuldig, "The reason why is because you've earned that money from murdering people.  
Essentially, you're of the same stock as us. For our own personal reasons, we both make a life out of killing others" then Schuldig laughed and laughed. "Have you lost something? If so, that's only because you chose to. You ought to incant a spell of a single word. You should admit it. Before you lose your mind."

"Aya!" he called out.

There was another male voice, "Aya-chan," it was a sing song voice.

Ran slowly opened his eyes to see a man's face, it was shadowed by loose dyed black curls and leant completely over him. It was rare enough that he let someone get close but he was still sleep drunk. "Huh?"

"Rise and shine," the man said, "it's already 9 o'clock." Ran tried to get to his feet but everything hurt. The man continued, "You need to get to the flowershop early to help Ken clean the place up, You've only got an hour and a half before it opens."

Ran swung his legs over the side of the bed with his head in his hands, "Where am I? Who're you?"

The man grinned, "I'll introduce myself," he said. "I'm Kudou Youji. Just "Youji"'s fine enough, It was tough getting you up here, too, sheesh, This is _my_ room, and you're sleeping in _my_ bed! So hurry up and get out! because I want some shuteye, now."

Ran tried to make sense of what was happening, but his head was not helping him, all he could see was flashes and hear Schuldig laughing in his ear. "_Mmm... What happened?" he asked himself, "Yesterday... I met that woman... then I went to the flower shop... There there was a fight... I must have lost consciousness then."_

The man, Yohji, continued regardless, "We were dripping sweat worried that you wouldn't wake up. Thought we'd have to take you to a hospital. You had a lot of things wrong with you. Feel any better?"

The threat of the hospital gave Ran a quick flash of Aya lying there in her bed, attached to wires and machines and it sobered him. "It's none of your concern." He answered.

Yohji laughed, "_That's_ something to say when you're in _my_ bed. Ah, sheesh, haven't you ever heard "Thank before and thank after"? I gave you my name. Since we're on the same team, you can at least give me yours."

Ran narrowed his eyes in suspicion as Schuldig laughed and laughed in his head, it made it hard to concentrate. "I thought that you'd already heard everything about me from that woman."

"That" woman? Which one?" Yohji asked. "Ah, you're talking about Birman?

Ran blinked at the name, he had hoped it would be familiar. It wasn't. "... Birman?"

That surprised Yohji. "What? You weren't told anything?"

"Because I was attacked suddenly..." Ran answered.

Yohji swept his hair back from his face with his hand before he spoke. _"_There's a lot of things we've got to learn about each other. For example, it's my nature to distrust information I haven't heard myself. I'll tell you what I know, and, in exchange, you'll tell me about yourself? "The words spoken to parents are the best kept secrests" What I hear is strictly confidential."

Ran blinked at him. "What do you mean?"

"I used to be a private detective." Yohji told him, "Why don't I talk about that, then? I'll explain about my old detective work.."

But Ran continued. " But, who -was- that woman?"

Youji rolled his eyes, which Ran could see, now, were green " ... Listen to what a guy is saying! Mm... she's called Birman. Of course, there's no reason why that'd be her real name. Her duty is to mediate between us and our boss Persia. The rule is, we don't know anything about Persia, and we don't inquire, either. All I can guess is that without a doubt he's a personage wielding a lot of political power. If there'd been no Persia, then you and I would've met in the afterlife. Oh yeah, Ken and Omi are both part of Weiß, too. What's with you? Starstruck by Birman? Don't bother trying." Yohji grinned "'Cause I saw her first. She's mine."

Ran continued. " How long have you been in Weiß?"

Youji worked it out before he answered, "Aaahh... 's been about two years now."

Ran answered him bluntly, "You've no nerve."

Youji narrowed his eyes angrily, but recovered quickly, _"_Sooo... what about this "Aya-chan"? Oh? I seem to have touched a nerve, haven't I?," Ran quickly pulled on his orange sweater and stood up, knowing he still wore his briefs when he woke up in the bed as he looked around for his jeans. Yohji continued on, regardless. "So? Who's Aya?  
Does she have something to do with that pierced ear?"

Ran grabbed Youji by his shirt, "You heard everything from that woman, didn't you! Do you want to hear the words from my own mouth!"

Yohji relaxed, " It's just a bit unusual.. A girlfriend? No... more like a sister, perhaps? You were calling out that name in your sleep. It wasn't something Birman told me." Ran released him, and pulled on his jeans as Yohji quickly thanked him, but Ran was at the door.

"Eh, leaving already?" Yohji asked, "II still don't know your name." Ran's hand tightened on the door knob but he said nothing. "Well, it doesn't matter, Shall I just call you "Aya", then?" It was a taunt.

Ran thought about it, "That's fine. Call me that."

That shocked Yohji. " Wha'? You're not serious?" but he heard Ran mutter something under his breath though he couldn't make out what it was as Ran left him.

"C_heekbones like geometry and eyes like sin"_

It was a standard mission, nothing complicated, one that they could even drop out of. Some bigwig was using people's debts to make them fight to the death in some twisted game of chess. It made no sense to Aya, but it was a means to an end. Kritiker had promised him Takatori and he had to start somewhere.

The mission brief was simple, find the organiser, recognisable by a birthmark on his forehead, and eliminate him, thereby ending the game.

Yohji had even lent him his watch, proof positive, he said, that it was the better weapon.

Yet there in the box, in a shiny grey suit that looked cheap, hair oiled and face set was Takatori and Aya had thought that it would coalesce when he saw him; that the rage and the pain and the numbness would be replaced by revenge. Something stopped him. Stood next to him, hair slicked back with product and horn rimmed glasses switched for wire frames, tall and beautiful in a cream suit, one step behind Takatori, was Crawford, and Imaginary Schuldig crowed-"Surprise!"

"_Take your hands off me_  


_I don't belong to you, you see"_

It was not the first dream that Aya had had of Crawford, and he doubted it would be the last, but it had an unfamiliar cadence, a sense of being wrong even though the memory was fresh and unwantedly cherished. They were in Crawford's bed, the smell of sex about them and their limbs heavy. Ran had wrapped himself like a koala bear to Crawford's back, his thighs either side of his hips and Crawford's back against his chest, but in the dream it was Aya not Ran who held his lover thus. He was older and he was scarred, but it didn't matter to Crawford in the slightest.

Crawford had Aya's hand in his, his arm along the inside line of Aya's, and in the back a man sung sweetly of mountains. It was the artist who sang about the mermaids but it was not the same song. Ran had suspected that Crawford rather liked that artist and he often became dreamy and distant when the song about the mermaids was played.

Crawford ran his thumb over the calluses on Aya's hands, "what are these from?" He asked and Ran had answered that he played the violin, that it was where he held the bow, but Aya answered from killing people.

Aya woke alone in his austere single bed covered in sweat and panting.

He showered quickly, and efficiently, then sat on the toilet, naked with his hair wet and just hung his head in his hands. He shouldn't still be dreaming of Crawford. It had been three years since the explosion. It had been nearly two since Sendai fell. "Buck up, kid," his imaginary Schuldig said perched on the bath, he wore a satin dressing gown with a vile chrysanthemum pattern and his hair was bright orange, a cigarette hanging from his hand and his legs bare to reveal a pair of pastel blue plaid slippers. "It's not like it's the end of the world." Then he smirked, "could be worse, you could be dead."

"No," Aya told him out loud, "that would be preferable to this."

He pulled on sweats and running shoes before he went downstairs to their communal kitchen. Omi was always up first, getting his homework done before school or even helping to set up the shop, though it couldn't have been much later than five AM. He looked, for a moment, surprised to see him, and then the assassin Bombay slipped from his features and he became sunny bright Omi again, "going for a run, Ayan?" he asked. "It's raining quite heavily. You might want to bring an umbrella."

Aya replied succinctly with a hn, because it didn't matter to him that it was raining, perhaps, he thought, the rain could wash away the ennui.

The percussion of his running hitting the pavement was soothing, he could feel his weight hit the soles of his feet, jar his ankles, run up his shins to end in his knees as he left puddles shattered behind him. He stopped at a corner and threw back his hood, sodden as it was, and bared his throat to the rain. He just stood there, in the empty street punctuated by taxi's, and let the rain soak his hair and face like he were having an epiphany, but there was no revelation to accompany this act. He just hoped he might actually wash away.

"You never look more beautiful than you do soaked." A voice said behind him. Aya thought for a moment it was his imaginary Schuldig, to whom rain didn't seem to exist. Then he turned and stood there, in sweats as soaked as his own was Crawford.

The lights of a taxi illuminated him for a moment and then passed on.

"I should kill you." Aya said bluntly.

"Yes." Crawford answered, "but not now."

He was smug and Aya moved to strike him, to knock the look of equanimity and joy off his face, but Crawford side stepped the blow easily and looped his hand around Aya's back pressing him against his chest. Aya, against his own volition, melted against the touch. His body knew Crawford even if his mind objected, he knew the hand splayed between his shoulder blades and the other in the small of his back. It knew the chest pressed against his own, and even the hammering of Crawford's heart that betrayed him even though is face was smugly calm.

Crawford bent his head to Aya's neck and just inhaled, breathing him in like he could, by very nature of breath, take Aya within his lungs and hold him there and closed his eyes and Aya watched him close his eyes in a pale mockery of ecstasy, of ownership and dominion. Then before Aya could push him away Crawford kissed him.

Aya could not have said how long they stood in the rain kissing, the rain sluicing down their skin before Crawford, and it was Crawford, pulled away. "Listen, lover," he said, "they're playing our song."

And from one of the windows around the corner that Aya had stopped at someone was playing the song about the mermaids, and Aya looked around to pinpoint the source. When he turned back to Crawford, unsure if he was going to kiss or kill him, Crawford was gone.

With his head down and his lips kiss swollen he started the walk back to the Kitten in the House. He licked his lips hoping perhaps to catch one last taste of Crawford, but all there was left was rain. It covered the tears he couldn't help.


	8. Did I dream you dreamed about me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ba Ra Kei

"_you have no right_  


_to ask me now_

  
_you were never that around_ _"_   


His white coat was spattered with blood and his hands felt empty and naked without his sword, left with Yohji in the ruins of Koua. Aya felt light headed, having cut away his braid, and the back of his neck felt exposed. His face was implacable and inside he felt as desolate as what remained of the academy they had so thoroughly destroyed. What was he supposed to do now, he wondered? There was nothing left: his vengeance achieved; Esset destroyed; Rosenkreuz destroyed.

Schuldig opened the door. The hair to the left side of his face was singed away and melted into clumps, there was an angry red mark on his face, and his silk shirt was soot blackened. In the years since Aya had seen him, imaginary or not, he still dressed as loudly as he always had. He looked older and tired, which was the first time Aya had ever seen him as anything less than perfectly, in his brash manner, turned out. The cigarette that dangled from his lips was unlit and broken. "Ran," he said the name when in Aya's head, although he had not been seen since Esset had fallen, he had always called him Aya. "He's at the hospital, will you come with me?"

"Is that a threat?" Aya asked, "are you going to pull out a gun and force me to go?"

"No," Schuldig said, "I just thought you'd like to say goodbye, even if it's only a rot in hell you bastard goodbye."

Aya blinked in shock. He tried to vocalise something, anything, but nothing came. After long moments when his mouth hung open and his throat hurt trying to force words, shapeless, formless airy things that never solidified into language, he just nodded.

It had been years. He hated him. He hated Crawford with every bone in his body and the very core of his being for what he had done, both to his family and to him, but in his heart, in some recess immune to the hate was the boy Aya had been, was Ran, and Ran had loved Crawford. Schuldig ran his hand through the left side of his hair and then frowned when his fingers caught. "Truce, for now. I won't kill you and you don't kill me."

Aya didn't answer him, he just sloughed off his coat leaving it across the bed of his anonymous hotel room, and his cravatte on the floor, so he wore only his trousers and shirt, which he untucked as he walked, "are you coming," he said as he went to pass Schuldig at the door.

"All these years, Ran," Schuldig said with his usual sneer, "and you're still his bitch."

"All these years, Schuldig," Aya replied with his face implacable and his tone even, "and you're still jealous that it wasn't you."

Schuldig didn't have an answer for that.

They sat in silence in the taxi, Aya was buzzing with adrenaline from the mission, and Schuldig said he didn't trust himself to drive, and the taxi was nicely anonymous. Schuldig sat back, with his head against the antimacassar on the back of the car seat and laughed. "Like it matters any more." He said, and then smiled to himself. "Here," he reached into his pocket and pulled out an aged and folded piece of paper. "He wrote this for you."

Aya looked at the paper disdainfully but neither opened it or threw it away.

"Not going to read it? I thought you'd want answers."

"It's too late for answers." He told him calmly.

Schuldig brayed out a laugh, then from his pocket took a small plastic bottle of aspirin, the sort you could get over the counter and shook two out into his hand, dry swallowing them. "It's only too late when you're dead." Aya pretended to notice how Schuldig was shaking, so with his thumbnail he broke the piece of tape that held the piece of paper closed.

Crawford's handwriting was small and neat, but there was something about the paper that suggested it was older than it should have been. It was written in Japanese, but strangely, only in katakana and not kanji such as a child might write.

He scanned the letter once, twice, a third time, and then he folded it, pressing his lips hard against each other and fought back the sob that had formed in his throat the size of a small planet.

"I've had that letter," Schuldig pointed out, "since I was fifteen. Oracles, eh?"

"Hn," Aya said because he knew he wouldn't be able to say anything else.

Hospitals were hated. They were white antiseptic buildings that lingered, where the corridors smelt of cheap floor polish and sickness, and Schuldig didn't hesitate at the reception desk, he went straight to the elevator and gave Aya's moment of hesitation, that he might futilely sit vigil at another bedside, by simply looking back at him.

The nurse wore a bubblegum pink and looked up at Schuldig with a rather sad smile, "You found him," she said, "we were worried."

"You don't know him," Schuldig replied, "he won't go yet."

Something within Aya shattered at that and Ran was left in the wreckage, the sweet and rather shy boy he had been when he had known Crawford- when Crawford had been his superman. Schuldig noticed the change because he looked back at him and for a moment looked rueful, as if he himself had done Ran a great wrong, when he had just stood witness.

Crawford looked very small in the wide hospital bed, there were tubes and machines and Ran didn't know what they were for, but he knew it was futile, that the machines were holding on and not much else. Crawford was dead but the machines were holding on for him. When he saw Ran he smiled. There was a bloodstain on the pillow beside his ear where the blood had come. It was surprising the machines could still keep him alive, he was as pale as the sheet, but more bloodless for most of his blood, it seemed, had already seeped into the linen.

"I wasn't sure you'd come." Crawford said, "i told Schuldig," he paused drawing in breath slowly, "not to let me go until you came, I..."

"I'm here," Ran said and offered him a rather shy smile. "Just rest, it's going to be okay."

Crawford started to laugh but ended up coughing instead, there was blood in the spray that escaped his mouth. He sat down beside the bed and took Crawford's hand in his own, running the pad of his thumb over the back of his hand, careful of the IV plug that was there. "It's not, love," he said, "it's not, just don't hate me."

"I never hated you." Ran lied. "Just rest, I'll be here as long as you need me."

There were tears in Crawford's eyes. They were blood-tinged and pink. "Massive cerebral haemorrhage," Schuldig said behind him.

Ran looked over him, holding his hand and took a deep breath, before he began, softly, to sing, "Long afloat on shipless oceans I did all my best to smile 'Til your singing eyes and fingers  
drew me loving into your eyes." He reached across and swept back the white hair that had fallen across Crawford's forehead.

Crawford smiled, it was wan and pale. "I remembered this," he said, "I loved this song because of now."

"Just rest," Ran repeated. He fought back a sob and started again, "And you sang "Sail to me, sail to me, Let me enfold you." He made a hacking sound at the back of his throat, "here I am," he made another noise, trying to sing past the lump, even sub-vocally as he was, "here I am" he scraped angrily at his tears, "waiting to hold you."

"_I've got monsters, _  


_How about you?"_

"Ran,

_I write this having made my decision knowing that I will always regret it, that no matter what I do and what I have done, that this choice was made with my complete knowledge and with every apology._

_I know that I will hurt you, that by the time you have read this that you will probably hate me, that you think that I have cut out your heart, and that I did so willfully. If you have this letter then I have asked Schuldig to hand it to you. I made this decision knowing it would hurt you but also that it was the only real decision I could make._

_I have known and loved you all of my life. I will always love you. I snatched every moment I had with you, and every hurt I gave you I felt a thousandfold. You were my torment and my heart and my choice was either to be with you and be happy when you were older, or I could save the world._

_Which would you have chosen? The same as I._

_You were my sacrifice, my own life was forfeit before Rosenkreuz even suspected that I might be of interest to them. I knew the options I was given. I know that I have made you hate me, because that is the last great gift I could give you._

_I'm sorry I had to hurt you._

_If there had been any other way._

_Those six months I spent with you were stolen, I could not resist. You were only a child, but there was no time to wait, there was no room for me to manoeuvre that we might have had longer. I rushed you because I could not stay away. I went that night to the university just to see you. I was going, I think, to avoid you, to watch you, but you were so beautiful, so much more than I ever hoped you'd be, bright, shining, witty and I could feel you love me. How was I supposed to resist? I ripped myself open every time I touched you knowing I would hurt you and how._

_I will have told you by now that I could see the future, and I could not resist you. I am only human after all, even if I hid that from you._

_I made my decision to destroy Rosenkreuz, to bring down Esset knowing that every gifted child after that would be free of their taint and their dominion, in my own little way I saved the world. _

_I ached for you, I do ache for you._

_But I knew our futures, all of them, I remembered what it was to be your lover, to be with you forever, to grow old and die with you and I am sorry, my love, that I denied you that. I was a child when I made my choice, and it was a choice, and I chose to be a hero so that you would look at me like I was superman._

_The greatest hurt I gave you was denying you the future that we would have had together, because I will always both remember and cherish it. I have seen your face in the shade of wonders and miracles and older, full of rage and pain and doubt as we argued. Do not think, even for a moment, that we were idyllic. Of course we argued. We lived in a large house in a small town called Telluride. I bought that house, you know._

_I am so sorry that I denied you that lifetime,that I denied you everything, even the ability to live without me because Kritiker surely now owns you, I could apologise until forever and it would not change the decision I made. I wish I knew that it was the right one._

_Everything I have, small as it might be, I leave to you. Schuldig knows this and will facilitate, do what you will with it, destroy it, burn it, give it away, I don't mind. Just remember me, that's all I ask._

_I'm sorry I hurt you, I loved you completely before I drew my first breath for I have always known you._

_I love you._

_C._


End file.
